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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 






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UNITED STATES GE AMERICA. 



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PERSONALITY 



J>entiong 



BY 



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SAMUEL RICHARD FULLER 

RECTOR OF ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, MALDEN, MASSACHUSETTS 







BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1892 




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Copyright, 3892, 
By SAMUEL RICHARD FULLER, 

All rights reserved, 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S.A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 



NOTE. 

The preservation of these unwritten sermons is 
due to the voluntary and faithful reports of Mr. 
Henry John Clark of Maiden. Frequent appli- 
cation to him for private reading of his manuscript 
has led to this issue in printed form, which with- 
out his labor of love would have been impossible. 
The opportunity has been taken to give the sermons 
a slight revision, but they stand substantially as 
delivered. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. Personality i 

II. A Personal Christ the Ultimate 

Gospel 21 

III. God's Spirit in Man's Life .... 39 

IV. Reconciliation to God by Apprehen- 

sion of God 57 

V. The Birth of the Soul 77 

VI. The Divine Surprises 97 

VII. Suffering n 1 

VIII. Job 129 

IX. Isaiah 147 

X. St. John 167 

XI. The Good Shepherd 183 

XII. The Church 195 

XIII. All Saints' 213 

XIV. Vines of Samaria 227 

XV. Personal Faith the Ground of Life 243 

XVI. Riches of God 257 

XVII. Entering by Faith 273 

XVIII. No Separation from the Love of God 289 



I. 

PERSONALITY. 

Because I live, ye shall live also. — St. John xiv. 19. 
21 June, i8gi. 



PERSONALITY. 

"Because I live, ye shall live also," as 
if he were to say : " For the same reason 
that I live, ye shall live also. The ground 
of your life is the same on which my life 
rests. The foundation of your life is the 
same as mine." The basis of your life is 
the same as that on which rests the life of 
God. Your life, therefore, is not a reflec- 
tion of any other life, is not a reflection of 
the life of God, is not an imitation of the 
life of God ; your life is real, not an imita- 
tion, not a reflection : for the same reason 
that Christ lives, you may live ; for the same 
reason that God lives, you may live. Your 
life may be just as real as is Christ's, as 
is God's, may have freedom of the same 
nature as the freedom of Christ's or God's 
life. This is a marvelous truth, that every 
human soul has within it the possibility 
of life, personal, individual life, the entire 



4 PERSONALITY. 

freedom of perfect life, as truly as Christ 
and as God ; "for the same reason that I 
live, ye shall live also." Personality, then, 
is the highest achievement in human life. 
To be yourself is the highest conceivable 
attainment — to be yourself and live as God 
lives. 

Christ stands the great life of the world 
because he lived his own life ; because in 
him was the realization, complete, full, and 
final, of personality ; because he lived • as 
God lives ; because he lived with the same 
basis of life that God has ; because his 
life was not in any way an imitation, nor a 
reflection, but simply the complete and 
full expression of what God had implant- 
ed there. He lived himself ; therefore, 
the highest achievement of human life is 
personality, because it is self-realization, 
self-mastery, self-attainment, the full and 
complete expression of all that God has 
implanted within us. In man there is in 
personality the highest that is within the 
knowledge of man. It is the "steepest, 
loftiest summit toward which we move in 
our attainment." 

Nothing in the realm of physical and 
scientific research can compare in worth 



PERSONALITY. 5 

and significance with this attainment of 
personality. 

Personality, in its absolute condition, as 
in the life of God, is without limitation ; 
it is the entire and complete fulfillment 
of all the forces that go to make up life, 
so that only in God do we find complete 
personality. That does not mean that 
man's personality is without reality ; is 
derived from outside sources ; that we are 
the played upon ; that we are but a bunch 
or collection of certain hereditary traits 
and tendencies, over which we have no 
control ; that our personality rests in 
the finite limitations by which we are 
surrounded ; that our personality has its 
ground in those limitations ; that we are 
the product of a certain environment ; 
that certain influences play upon us as the 
chisel upon the marble ; although our per- 
sonality has, as a matter of fact, its ex- 
istence among finite limitations, but not 
its ground in them. Of course, our per- 
sonality is affected by those finite limita- 
tions. It is true that we are constantly 
taking our cue from other lives, but al- 
ways to our disadvantage. 

Personality in man is impaired in the 



6 PERSONALITY. 

same measure in which it is determined 
from without. It suffers the mutations 
which exist in the necessary processes of 
the world. We are content with low 
views, influenced by other lives, and so 
our personality is colored by those limita- 
tions, but always to our disadvantage. 
Wherever our personality is affected by 
our surroundings, or is derived from those 
surroundings, just so far is it impaired. 
The example of some one else will never 
serve for us, because each man is made 
to live his own life. Each man has his 
own ground of personality, his own foun- 
dation for his own personality, in the same 
everlasting life that Christ has, that God 
has. He is made to be a free spirit, an 
entire and complete realization of the 
forces that are w T ithin him, to be an indi- 
vidual, to have his own freedom, his own 
life, in his own way. In other w T ords, 
every human soul, however low, debased, 
or degraded he may be, is made to live his 
own life in his own way, and to take hold 
of his own portion of the eternal. 

This is a marvelous gospel to preach to 
men, that they may live as God lives, as 
Christ lives, that for the same reason that 



PERSONALITY. J 

God lives, they may live also. It is the 
glorious gospel of the achievement of per- 
sonality, of the attainment of indepen- 
dence of life, of self-mastery, the glorious 
gospel that every man, by the slow, long, 
and tedious process of individuation may 
build himself up as Christ is built up, in 
fullness of assertion and of soul life. 

See how this process works. Here are 
men striving for personality. They scorn 
imitation, they understand that it is of the 
nature of limitation. They understand 
that life is so powerful that it must burst 
from the restraints of all confining influ- 
ences ; that if they are to live as Christ 
lives, as God lives, they must express 
themselves fully and completely. 

How glorious, then, it is to think that 
they may have, as the highest possible 
achievement in human life, the realization 
of their own personality. See what this 
means. See how God loves with that per- 
fect love which knows no hate, which can 
harbor no shadow of the feeling of resent- 
ment ; that perfect love which pours out 
its forgiveness as naturally and as truly 
upon foe as upon friend, as the outpouring 
spring pours out naturally the rivulet, the 



8 PERSONALITY. 

stream, the river that loses itself in the 
ocean of its own realization. See that 
perfect love of God, which holds within its 
protecting arms every human soul, and in 
that perfect love see the spiritual force, 
which is eternal in its very nature ; and 
as we see this perfect love of God, so we 
perceive that personality realizes itself in 
proportion as it is able to take hold of 
that portion of eternal life which is love ; 
realizes itself in proportion as it is able 
to love perfectly, as God loves ; so are we 
drawn nearer and nearer to God, for the 
process of the realization of personality 
brings man always nearer to God. Thus 
is the bond made more real and more vi- 
tal which holds us to God. Nay, there is 
the eternal necessity of striving to love 
as God loves, in order that we may live 
as he lives. 

Sometimes this comes as a hard message 
to human souls. Hearts are torn asunder 
by the wrong-doing of others. Must it 
not be a hard message to God when we do 
him despite and shame and wrong, that he 
must love us ? Yet he does. But as his 
perfect love holds us, so we are held by 
that perfect life when we learn to live as 
he lives. 



PERSONALITY, 9 

As of love, so of thought. The thought 
of God pours itself out as from the fath- 
omless depths of eternal truth. There is 
the perfect truth that pours out from him 
so that thought and will are one ; that 
thought which sees, in its all -wisdom, 
from the very beginnings of every human 
soul away on to its completion ; that 
thought which realizes itself in absolute 
and perfect truth. That is the force of 
personality which finds only its complete 
realization in God himself. 

But as we learn to love as God loves, 
to think as he thinks, to receive from him 
the outpouring from those great reservoirs 
of eternal truth, so are we to become 
inspired, breathed into, by his eternal 
thought, so live as he lives, and make our 
will at one with his thought. Then there 
follows rightness of conduct, and it cannot 
be otherwise. Given absolute love and 
thought, the outcome of those two spirit- 
ual forces, love and truth, must of neces- 
sity be right dealing, right expression, 
right conduct ; in a word, righteousness. 

Do you not see, then, the sublime 
height to which you may climb, the sum- 
mit of all human endeavor, which can be 



IO PERSONALITY. 

reached by taking hold of those forces of 
the spirit out of which, as a necessary 
consequence, there must come right liv- 
ing, right conduct, righteousness, or, in 
other words, the right expression of the 
human life according to its own laws, the 
taking hold by the individual of his own 
portion of the eternal, and living his own 
life, in his own individual peculiar way, in 
righteousness ? 

I wish I could hold before you the 
glory of this possibility, the sweetness, 
the richness, of this attainment of per- 
sonality. I wish I could make you feel 
that if you should take hold of God, that 
is to say, take hold of these eternal truths 
which go to make up the life of God, that 
you would then live absolutely, and, liv- 
ing in your own way, would assert your 
own life, vindicate your own soul expe- 
rience. 

The one thing you are to strive after is 
to be yourself, not to be another. Every 
force that God has implanted in you is 
of the same nature as those spiritual 
forces which find expression in himself ; 
they are not separated from God even in 
thought, they are of the same nature and 



PERSONALITY. 1 1 

waiting for the same expression. Is it 
possible, O infinite Father, that we may- 
be like thee ? And Christ gives the an- 
swer, " For the same reason that I live, 
ye shall live also/' 

Here enters the personal element, the 
meaning of your life. It is the struggle to 
be yourself. 

Life has no greater meaning than this ; 
it is an effort at self-mastery, self-victory. 
It is an effort to live your own life. It 
is an effort to rest your own personality 
on the same foundation as that on which 
rests the personality of God. 

Because the life of Jesus was so wide- 
reaching, so profound, so exalted, had such 
a scope, touched human life so at every 
point, it was impossible for him to retain 
within himself any negative force of hate, 
and because he could love perfectly and 
truly, it was possible for him to think truly 
and perfectly as to those great eternal 
truths which have their influence and ef- 
fect upon human life. 

That we may think truly, we must first 
learn to love truly. Thought pours out its 
richest treasure only in the hearts that love 
the truth. No scoffing man receives great 



12 PERSONALITY. 

riches of eternal knowledge ; no carping 
spirit in any realm of investigation receives 
the richest reward from the great treasure- 
house of ascertained knowledge ; and be- 
cause Christ loved in such an exalted way, 
he was able to think truly, to teach truly, to 
pour out of himself the great teachings of 
eternal truth which welled up in his soul, 
and because he was so able to love and 
to think and to pour out the truth, as a 
consequence he could make no mis-steps in 
conduct. 

If we could love as he loved and think as 
he thought, mis-steps in conduct would be 
impossible. It is because love and thought 
and will do not have harmony existing 
among them that stumbling ensues^ that 
transgression of spiritual laws and unright- 
eousness takes place, and sin, as a many- 
headed monster, seems to demand that we 
shall serve it continually. But if we have 
the perfect love and thought of Christ, then 
righteousness comes, righteousness in the 
same way that you and I are made to be 
righteous ; that is to say, " for the same 
reason that I am righteous, ye also may," 
nay, "also shall be righteous." 

On those sublime heights, then, Jesus 



PERSONALITY. 1 3 

stands, in the complete achievement of his 
own personality ; stands there as having 
brought about the ultimate result of that 
long process of soul individuation by which 
he is separated from the great mass of hu- 
man life, so separated as to assert within 
himself his own individuality and person- 
ality ; standing there because of his com- 
plete individuation ; standing there as the 
one man the world has ever seen ; unique, 
because one with God, and yet it is the 
same divineness that is held out as the 
possible achievement of every individual 
soul, — "for the same reason that I live, 
ye shall live also." 

From those sublime heights hear the 
voice of Jesus calling, "Come up here also 
and be a man." The call is to every hu- 
man soul to strive to live its own life as 
Christ lived his life, to be free from every 
imitation and thus free from every limita- 
tion. See how hate may poison the very 
springs of your conduct ; how falsehood 
may, like a viper, envenom the very life- 
blood of your mind, and make it impossible 
for you to bring forth all the latent forces 
of your soul. Jesus calls, " Come up here 
also and be a man ; be yourself, and be one 



14 PERSONALITY. 

with God." Nay, he not only stands upon 
those sublime heights, but he descends 
into the gruesome valleys, where we are 
living with poisoned hearts, unstable 
minds, unrighteous conduct, and as he 
would lead the wounded lamb, the bruised 
soul, as he would bind up the broken- 
hearted, stanch the flow of blood from the 
gaping wound, so he comes down from 
those exalted heights, those heights lit 
with the radiance of Almighty God, and 
through tortuous paths, through bramble, 
and thorn, and tangle, and thicket, he seeks 
every human soul. His locks are wet with 
dew, on him are the rains that have poured 
down upon our hearts and lives, and yet 
he seeks to take us up to those exalted 
heights where personality is the achieve- 
ment of his soul, and is made to be the 
achievement of ours, also. 

I have tried to show you what the mean- 
ing of life is. It is to struggle -for the 
achievement of your individuality, your 
own life, your own personality ; that as 
God has those great soul forces in full and 
complete attainment and expression, that 
as in him there is absolute personality 
without any limitation, and, in consequence 



PERSONALITY. 1 5 

absolute and complete freedom of spirit, 
that so in you there is the same ground of 
life, that " for the same reason he lives, ye 
shall live also/' Then I have tried to show 
you also how it is that Jesus is the right- 
eous one, because he expressed in himself 
his own individuality and personality, has 
taken hold for himself of his own peculiar 
portion of the eternal; that he is, therefore, 
unique, and, because unique, he is divine, 
and, because divine, he is one with God, 
and, because one with God, he is the mani- 
festation, the revelation, the uttered word 
of God himself. 

I know what a glorious gospel this is to 
preach to you. I know that when you are 
conscious of your own peculiarities, nay, of 
your own temptations, your own hardness 
of experience, of the heartbroken agony 
that seems to rend asunder body and spirit, 
■ — I know that at such moments you are to 
remember that those very peculiar experi- 
ences of yours are to be treasured as gifts 
that come from God. 

Fancy for a moment Jesus ignoring the 
peculiar life that he had bestowed upon him. 
Fancy for a moment his imitation of some 
other life, his life being influenced in its 



1 6 PERSONALITY. 

development by surrounding conditions, 
his ever failing to be true to himself, fail- 
ing to be himself, and you behold the 
defeat of the soul-struggle instead of the 
victory of self-mastery. 

Bear with me while I say this, that abso- 
lute independence must be your aim ; you 
must strive to live as no other soul has 
ever lived. God has put a heart in you 
unlike that of any other being that ever 
lived. Your heart, your affection, your love, 
is unlike the heart, the affection, or the love 
of any other soul that ever lived. As was 
the life of Jesus, of Paul, as was the life of 
every great spirit that has been great be- 
cause of his individuality and asserted per- 
sonality, and, because of his being great, 
has been useful, so is the life of every man, 
woman, and child. You have your own 
heart, your own love, your own thought, to 
express in your own way. Thus God lives ; 
thus are you privileged to live. " For the 
same reason that he lives, you may live/' 

You are to express this life in indepen- 
dence. Not in the same way as some other 
life, not reflecting some other life. Abso- 
lute independence in your life is to be your 
aim. 



PERSONALITY. IJ 

As this must be your aim in your love, 
so also in your thought. Check not the 
inspiration of God by the blending in of 
your own theory, your own thought. 
Think after God. Think his thoughts after 
him. Let him pour his truth into you as 
he is pouring it out in all its fullness and 
richness. 

No flower is like its companion ; no leaf 
is like its mate ; no bird sings as any other 
bird has sung. There are no repetitions 
with God in his physical universe, nor are 
there any repetitions in his spiritual crea- 
tions. Your achievement is to be the attain- 
ment of your own personality, to love and 
to think independently, as he loves and 
thinks, and with these two conditions your 
righteousness, that is to say, your conduct, 
will be unlike the conduct of any soul that 
has ever been — it will be your own. 

It is God's call to you to be unlike your 
neighbor. His call is, " Come up higher 
and declare yourself. Stand with me on 
this height in your own life and in your 
own way." Standing there, fear is impos- 
sible. Who can be filled with fear when 
he is above the clouds of man's ambition ? 
Ambitions are but the mist of deadly poi- 



1 8 PERSONALITY. 

son that destroys the soul, and when the 
soul has reached those starry heights of fel- 
lowship with the life of God he has no am- 
bitions and can be attacked by no fears. 
The courage of a great life ministers to 
him. Nor on those heights can he be 
touched by the slings and arrows of mali- 
cious tongues, by slander, or by the cal- 
umny of vindictive words, for, though he 
be the chief of sinners, as St. Paul was in 
his own estimate, God still is calling to him 
in his great love and all-seeing wisdom to 
come up higher, and to declare his own love, 
his own thought, his own life, and so de- 
clare himself that he shall at length be 
righteous. 

Men may sneer and scoff at such a soul, 
but they cannot harm it, as they could not 
harm the one who endured such a storm on 
Calvary's mount. 

Thus as you have loved and thought 
after God and with God, so superstition 
can find no lodgment in your souls. What 
is superstition ? A collection of perverted 
thoughts, poisonous, deadly notions about 
God and about the human soul. There can 
be no torture with God, and if we rightly 
apprehend him there can be no room for 



PERSONALITY. 19 

a false, vindictive God in our thoughts. 
He shall hold in his loving arms forever 
the child of his begetting. As God is our 
father he can never cease to love us, to call 
to us as does Jesus as he stands on those 
sublime heights, " Come up here also and 
be a man." As God loves and thinks, so 
he will hold us to himself. And the truer 
we are to ourselves, the nearer we come to 
him and live more truly and perfectly in 
him in whom we always live, and move, and 
have our being. 

Take with you to your homes this morn- 
ing the thought that to be like God is to be 
yourself, is to live your own life, is to take 
hold of your own portion of the eternal, 
your own segment of the circle of eternal 
life. To be like God is to enter into the 
freedom of his spirit, is to love as he loves, 
think as he thinks, act as he acts. Would 
you be helped to this great consummation ? 
Then take the outstretched hand, the 
wounded hand, of the brother Jesus whom 
you have seen, that he may lead you into 
the eternal presence of him whom you have 
not seen. 



II. 



A PERSONAL CHRIST THE ULTI- 
MATE GOSPEL. 

Looking unto Jesus the finisher of our faith. — Heb. 

xii. 2. 

14. June, i8gu 



II 



A PERSONAL CHRIST THE ULTIMATE 
GOSPEL. 

The ultimate gospel will be the one 
which shall manifest a personal life of the 
race, which shall make possible the ulti- 
mate triumph of the best there is in human 
nature over the worst. That is to be the 
final gospel. 

Whether it is Christianity or not shall 
be determined by the issue. It will be 
our present Christianity in its substance, 
if this Christianity is faithful to her Lord ; 
it must be a real Christianity because it 
must be Christ. The ultimate gospel, the 
final revelation, must be Jesus Christ. 

It will be well, also, for our present 
Christianity if it be Christianity. It must 
be Jesus Christ, because he is not only 
the beginner of our faith, but he is the 
completer, the finisher of our faith ; and 
he himself, not something said about him, 



24 PERSONALITY. 

not a system of theology, not a code of 
laws, not even a message, but he himself 
is the gospel, the ultimate gospel, because 
he himself is that manifestation of the per- 
sonal life of the race which can make it 
possible for the final triumph of the best 
there is in human nature over the worst.. 

I wish I could make this very clear and 
to be very deeply felt. I sympathize keenly 
with that yearning of the human heart for 
good tidings. Most fully do I sympathize 
with those throes of the human race which 
are the very agony of the human soul by 
which, as in a mine, the rock is let loose 
and the gold is discovered. I sympathize 
with all the attempts that men and women 
are making for a larger and completer life, 
I feel deeply with that intense desire 
which is manifesting itself continually to 
accomplish better, nobler, greater things. 
I realize how intense is the striving to 
bring in a new kingdom, a kingdom of 
righteousness ; I appreciate how we all are 
longing for anew heaven and a new earth, 
how every man and woman in his or her 
best estate is desiring to see the city which 
hath foundations, longing for the republic 
of God, is desiring to see the kingdom of 



THE ULTIMATE GOSPEL. 2$ 

God among men, praying in very truth 
"Thy kingdom come." And I would say 
to such, as I must say to myself, that 
that city of God, that republic of God, 
that city which hath foundations, that new 
heaven and new earth can come, and will 
come, in the only way possible, in the 
manifestation of the personal life of the 
race, which personal life shall have within 
it the elements of the possible triumph of 
the best there is in human nature over the 
worst. 

I have carefully said "a personal life/' 
because I think that in every uplifting of 
the human mind there must of necessity 
be the influence of the personal element. 
I may not understand the reason of this, 
— the reason why I may not rise from 
higher to still higher and more perfect 
conditions, apart from the aid of any per- 
sonal element. As I stand and reason 
theologically, metaphysically I do not find 
myself able to detect the flaw in my reason- 
ing, in my theory, when I am inclined to 
say to myself : " I can bring the new life 
into my soul quite alone, without personal 
aid." 

But still it seems to me that when man 



26 PERSONALITY. 

is to grow from strength to strength, mani- 
fest larger life, there must be the impetus, 
the kindling power, the vitalizing force of 
a personal element. 

Soldiers find it so beneath the flag 
which they are striving to defend. Even 
those who give themselves to art and 
music find themselves not altogether free 
from the inspiring influence of master 
and teacher, and wherever we find hu- 
man hearts and wills welded together as 
by a common purpose, there we find the 
personal element present, inspiring and 
building up. It seems to be a law of 
human activity in its best estate, opera- 
tive in the development of the best over 
the worst, that there shall be present, as 
an impelling and compelling force, a per- 
sonal force, element, life. 

I do not see men and women, as a 
matter of fact, rise to their highest when 
this personal element is absent. I can 
understand how a man in those crises 
of the national life, when the very fireside 
is in peril, reading in his newspaper of 
the necessities of the army, of the call 
of patriotism, and of the reasons why a 
man should enlist, — I can understand 



THE ULTIMATE GOSPEL. 27 

how, theoretically, he should say, "I must 
be a soldier and go to the front." But 
he does not go. There is lacking the en- 
thusiasm which is kindled by personal in- 
fluence. I am constrained to believe that 
God calls forth the best that is within us 
only through a personal channel, only by 
the manifestation of a personal life, — a 
life which shall be the life of the race, 
which shall make possible the final triumph 
of the best there is in human nature over 
the worst, — so only through himself in 
Jesus, the Christ, 

Men may sneer at us in our demand for 
personal life, may not understand our de- 
votion to a personal Christ ; but I think as 
men grow older that they begin to realize 
that there is something lacking whenever 
they are striving for the greatest, apart 
from this devotion and loyalty to a per- 
sonal Christ. 

I see this in children, in the influence 
that one boy has upon another: how a high- 
spirited lad can draw out the best there 
is in another boy, and inspire him with 
enthusiasm to accomplish what he thought 
an impossible task! I see this, as it seems 
to me, in every phase of human life, so 



28 PERSONALITY. 

that I am constrained to believe that, if 
we are to have a new heaven and a new 
earth, it must be by the declaring of a 
personal life, the personal life of him 
whose attainments in life are of such a 
nature as to make him, by eminence and 
by successful expression, the head of the 
race. 

This is the reason why I believe that 
Christianity is not only the revelation of 
God, because it is the revelation of Christ, 
but that it is the ultimate revelation, it 
is to be the ultimate gospel, and whenever 
men will cease to build up their own lit- 
tle systems between themselves and God 
they shall see that Jesus Christ is Lord 
of all, and that Christianity has within it 
the possibility of being the ultimate gos- 
pel of mankind. 

Here are some theories you have. You 
have been constrained to feel that hu- 
man life would crystallize. You have 
wrapped about you, like graveclothes, spir- 
itually, certain thoughts, theories, notions, 
till you have come to substitute your 
own notions for God's facts, to dwell in 
your own theories instead of his reali- 
ties. You see elsewhere that life does 



THE ULTIMATE GOSPEL. 29 

not crystallize. I may bind the tree with 
knotted thongs, but still the growth will 
go on, soon the cord will tighten, and, a 
little later, with a groan and a snap, it will 
defy my attempts to restrain its life. So 
with the human soul. You may wrap about 
a soul confessions of faith, attempt to crys- 
tallize it with a theory, make an effort to 
run it in a mould of some peculiar notion 
about God ; but God himself, who refuses 
to be held with chains, ever pours out him- 
self as the outpouring of life, as the in- 
spirer of human souls, and goes on living 
in that soul which you and I have tried to 
restrain, till there comes a moment when 
the preconceived notion begins to tighten, 
there comes a bursting of the bonds, a go- 
ing forth from the cerements which have 
been wrapped about the spiritual life, and 
the risen life walks out, refusing to be 
bound, defying any attempt at crystalliza- 
tion, and declaring its life as God gives it 
to it. 

It is so with human life in every pro- 
cess, whether physical or spiritual. Hu- 
man life refuses to be crystallized, to be 
bound, to be held, to be restrained. 

Inspiration is constant. These are days 



30 PERSONALITY. 

of inspiration just as truly as any the 
world has ever seen. Human life cannot 
be robbed of inspiration. Men and wo- 
men are as much inspired to-day as they 
ever have been, and will be more and 
more inspired as they let the soul fly to 
its God, and break away from crystalli- 
zation and restraint, refuse to be bound 
about by notions and theories, and no 
longer substitute their own notions for 
God's everlasting facts. 

If I have been perfectly clear that there 
must be a personal element in every effort 
to rise to higher conditions in the soul and 
in the race, that life refuses to be crystal- 
lized, that it will burst the graveclothes 
of any attempt to confine it within the 
limitations of our own theories and no- 
tions, and that the soul must be con- 
stantly breathed into by God, then, I think, 
you are ready to say, when philosophy 
affirms, " I have found the way, the truth, 
and the life ; I have found how the new 
heaven and the new earth are to come ; 
I have discovered the kingdom of right- 
eousness and of heaven ; I have formu- 
lated the ultimate gospel of life ; when 
improvement shall come along the lines 



THE ULTIMATE GOSPEL. 3 1 

of ethical culture, then men shall reach a 
sufficient development by which to be 
fairly judged/'-— you are ready to say that 
while this theory of ethical culture is a 
theory of real worth, and one which, un- 
questionably, has done much in aid of 
truth, yet it lacks at a vital point. 

If I go into a chemist's laboratory, he 
will tell me that the human organization 
is made up of gases, and will enumerate 
the constituent elements. It is all true 
and good just so far as it goes. The the- 
ory is sound ; it is all logical; it can be 
expressed in accurate formulae. Let us 
have a man, then. But it does not work. 
Who shall breathe into him the breath of 
life ? It does not materialize the life. 

Theoretically, I cannot see any logical 
flaw in the notions of philosophy in ethical 
culture. I do not use the term "notion" 
disrespectfully. Let us see this theory ; it 
is this : That man in his upward develop- 
ment from the brute attained certain intel- 
lectual faculties, facilities, and forces, and 
out of these has developed certain notions 
as to right and wrong, which we have de- 
nominated conscience. But this dawn of 
conscience shows itself in a very low state, 



32 PERSONALITY. 

awaiting that moment of development when 
it shall be illuminated with the light of a 
more perfect day by the sun of righteous- 
ness shining into it ; then, as this cultiva- 
tion of the conscience goes on, there is 
noted the necessity of observing the rights 
and privileges of others in the community, 
and here are the beginnings of what is called 
altruism — the welfare of our neighbor and 
of the community. If we could get this 
highly developed conscience and a recog- 
nition of those principles of the welfare of 
neighbor and state, we should have a more 
perfectly developed civilization. 

This is the theory. But as a matter of 
fact, there lacks something which makes 
it possible for a human soul to 1iave its 
conscience quickened and inspired, and to 
grow sensitive, and to have its powers of 
perception whetted so that it may deter- 
mine the right and refuse to follow the 
wrong, that it may behold the vision of 
holiness in its beauty, and behold that 
vision in such manner as to be captivated 
by it, — and that something which is lack- 
ing, it seems to me, is the personal ele- 
ment. 

I look to Jesus, and in beholding him I 



THE ULTIMATE GOSPEL. 33 

am inspired, held by enthusiastic love and 
admiration, by him who has realized in 
himself all those redemptive forces which 
make life possible. 

I do not understand the why, and I am 
not able to detect the reasons ; it seems, 
however, to be simply true that when we 
go about our business, actuated only by 
theory, by notion, by what we calmly deter- 
mine to be the best, there appears to be 
lacking something to bring these notions 
into life. 

I am not finding fault with the strivings 
of philosophy. I find no fault with these 
theories of the development of the con- 
science so far as they go, but, so far as I 
am concerned, there lacks the inspiration 
of the personal element, that vitality which 
comes from a person, and makes it possible 
for man to rise, grow, break away from 
those moulds, forms, and theories in which 
he has thus far been content to exist, and 
I find it in one whose life is the manifes- 
tation of the personal life of the race, be- 
cause I regard Jesus as the human race, 
the very embodiment of mankind, the one 
catholic man, and, therefore, with St. Paul, 
I hold him to be "the finisher of our faith. " 



34 PERSONALITY. 

I trust you will agree with me; at all 
events, I must declare it as my message 
that, as philosophy, with its systems of 
ethical culture, is lacking, because bereft 
of this personal element, so also there is 
something lacking in any system of social 
science which says, " I have found the new 
heaven and the new earth, if you will only 
wait till the logical result shall have been 
reached of these efforts that I am making 
toward the improvement of the environ- 
ment of the race." 

I understand how much environment has 
to do with life. I know it is very hard to 
live like a man while housed like a brute, 
to be clean and virtuous when the possi- 
bilities of decency are beyond one's reach. 
I understand it, and with great pity that 
the environment in many places is such as 
to shame the privilege of those who know 
better, who have within themselves the pos- 
sibilities of making things better, have in- 
trusted to them stored power, knowledge, 
and wealth, and yet tolerate such environ- 
ment for a moment, and I bid God-speed to 
social science as it strives to improve the 
condition of our fellow-beings. I long to 
see their efforts reach the desired and de- 



THE ULTIMATE GOSPEL. 35 

sirable result. I understand perfectly well 
that a comparatively new heaven and new 
earth are waiting for us when we shall 
have housed our brothers and sisters only 
as well as we do now our beasts of burden, 
and I therefore say God-speed to every 
effort of social science toward the improve- 
ment of the race. 

But perfect environment does not make 
perfect men. I see men clothed in purple 
and fine linen, faring sumptuously every 
day, with the softness of luxury surround- 
ing them, but I do not always find the 
highest development of spiritual life within 
palatial walls. Saints there are there, but 
their saintliness is not the outcome of 
their perfect environment. "What went 
ye out for to see ? A man clothed in soft 
raiment ? Such live in kings houses. A 
reed shaken by the wind ? " Ah, yes. 
Such are the lives of many men and women 
whose environment is indeed perfect, but 
they themselves are as reeds shaken by the 
wind, and so shaken that we are compelled 
to this conclusion, that environment does 
not make life ; that gilded palaces, adorned 
with works of art and hanging with rich 
tapestries, do not produce life. Do you not 



36 PERSONALITY. 

think so ? So that if every city's streets 
could be made fair, and if every human soul 
could live in palaces, surrounded by every 
perfect condition of physical environment, 
that would not bring the new heaven and 
the new earth. 

Nero fiddling while Rome burns, — a 
most perfect physical environment, indeed. 
See him watch those living torches, Chris- 
tians clothed in pitch, burning as candles to 
light his summer fete. 

It is artificial, dramatic, unreal, to think 
that the spirit of the sectarian, the spirit 
of the ecclesiastic, the spirit of the framer 
of ecclesiastical shibboleths, so that the 
tongue may trippingly pronounce each ar- 
ticle of the confession of faith and not hes- 
itate between sibboleth and shibboleth, 
the spirit of substituting theories and no- 
tions for God's facts, the attempt to confine 
life, to crystallize spiritual power and force, 
— to think all this to be vital is indeed un- 
real ! 

Men have thought this. One denomi- 
nation of Christians after another has said, 
" The new heaven and the new earth " (and 
has said it with entire sincerity) " shall 
come when all men and women shall think 



THE ULTIMATE GOSPEL. 37 

as I think, and subscribe to the same con- 
fession of faith." There are no excep- 
tions ; it has been so with the Methodist, 
the Roman Catholic, and the Episcopalian. 
We have believed, in very sooth, that our 
theories, our notions, our formulae, our 
statements about God, can take the place 
of God himself. 

Christianity is not of Christ when this 
sectarian spirit seizes it. Christianity is 
not the ultimate gospel when it ceases to 
be Christ ; is not the bringing in of the 
new heaven and the new earth when it 
strives to make all men conform to a uni- 
form statement of a theory or a notion. 

But Christianity is Christ when it sees 
in him the hope of glory ; when it takes 
into its life him who is the life of the soul. 
Christianity is the ultimate gospel, the 
universal church, the kingdom of heaven 
upon earth, when it takes the one great 
catholic man, Jesus, enfolds him to her 
heart, and strives to grow as he grew, to 
live as he lived, strives to reflect on 
earth him from whom is life, strives to 
have the kingdom of heaven come with 
great power within the soul and through 
the race, conquering every negative force, 



38 PERSONALITY. 

and finds in him the possibility of the 
triumph of the best there is in human 
life over the worst 

Hold forth that hope to human souls 
and you have preached to them a gospel 
which must and shall be the ultimate gos- 
pel, an inspiration that they are working 
with God, and that God's working cannot 
be stayed. You have preached to them 
him who is the resurrection and the life ; 
hini who began our faith by giving us God, 
who will complete our faith by giving us 
more and more of God ; who shall be the 
finisher of our faith by giving us the ulti- 
mate gospel, by bringing into our hearts 
and lives that manifestation and unfolding 
of the eternal life of the universe, God 
of God, very God of very God, — Jesus 
Christ 



III. 

GOD'S SPIRIT IN MAN'S LIFE. 

The Spirit of truth. Ye know him ; for he dwelleth in 
you. — St. John xiv. 17, in part 

if May, i8qi. 



III. 

GOD'S SPIRIT IN MAN'S LIFE. 

We know of being by its manifestation, 
and only by its manifestation. We know 
the Spirit of Truth because he dwelleth 
with us and manifesteth himself in us. Ev- 
ery human soul is a manifestation of God, 
of the Spirit of Truth, is an incarnation of 
God, for every human soul is a son of God, 
and the son must declare him ; and we 
know the Spirit of Truth because he dwell- 
eth with us. 

Of course, this manifestation of the 
Spirit of Truth is diversified. It is not 
the same in every human soul. The pure 
white ray of light is broken up into many 
colors, manifests itself in different ways. 
In one it colors the alpine snows with the 
delicate tint of the early rose ; in another 
it gives the pansy its color, and so on. 
Manifestation declares being. I take a 
jewel in my hand and turn it to the sun's 



42 PERSONALITY. 

light, and the color declares its being. So 
I know the character of the human soul 
only by its manifestation. Whenever it 
speaks, then I know what it is, what its 
character is. 

You say, " I know a man by the spirit 
that is within him. Not always by his 
achievements, his attainments, but by the 
spirit that animates him, the motive that 
lies at the base of his conduct ; not by 
his high flights in the sphere of character, 
but by the spirit that animates him, the 
motive of his life." So I know being by 
its manifestation. 

When we come to speak of God, we are 
speaking of a spirit that manifests itself, 
and in the complete result of that manifes- 
tation declares itself as fully as, with our 
finite minds, we can comprehend. 

So with Christ. We say he is the man- 
ifestation of God, the word of God, the 
declared God, the result of the manifes- 
tation of God, therefore, he is the mani- 
fested God. We know the character of 
God by the character of Jesus Christ, be- 
cause we see in him the complete fulfill- 
ment of all that our most vivid imagination 
can paint as the perfection, of character, 



GOD'S SPIRIT IN MAX'S LIFE. 43 

of life. So we may call Jesus Christ the 
manifested God. 

There is also the process of manifesta- 
tion. The Holy Spirit is the process, the 
operation, and we find the operation of the 
Holy Spirit declaring itself in us. 

How shall we know anything of the out- 
side world save as we study it from within ? 
We ourselves are the only things with 
which we are familiar, and even here there 
are great mysteries, but there are also cer- 
tain tangible facts which concern the in- 
dividual life ; so, when we are striving to 
seek after God, the argument begins from 
within. We turn to ourselves and find 
something there that we may examine, 
study, and ponder until the mystery of life 
discovers to us some reasonable and tangi- 
ble answer. I do not say that we may de- 
termine all the truth that is within us, but 
if we are to search after truth, we are to 
begin with ourselves. And when we begin 
the search, what do we find first that is 
real, tangible ? Life. 

The surgeon's knife, no matter how 
skillfully it may cut, cannot find the secret 
of life. The alchemv of the chemist, has 
failed to discover its secret. There is no 



44 PERSONALITY. 

process known to man by which he can 
discover the secret of life ; how it begins 
or what is its nature. Yet we know that 
we live, think, feel, have experiences of 
the soul; and these feelings, thoughts, ex- 
periences, and manifestations we call life. 
We know that we live, because there is 
within us that nameless something which 
we call life. You and I know that we pos- 
sess this mysterious something ; are con- 
scious that we live. No one here may tell 
us that we do not live. We are not able 
to solve this mystery, but yet the fact re- 
mains with us. The being is known by 
its manifestation, and it is of such a char- 
acter that we call it life. 

It seems to rne, we must come to this: 
either that life proceeds from a living, 
spiritual source, or that it proceeds from 
something which is not life. There is this 
alternative for us. We must say either 
there is a spiritual source, or a material 
source. The more I think and study, the 
more I see these lines run closely together, 
and it seems to me that men of all shades 
of opinion are coming to this conclusion, 
that ultimately even matter, the ultimate 
molecule, is animated by mind. At all 



GOD'S SPIRIT IN MAN'S LIFE, 4$ 

events, we are to accept, as the only solu- 
tion that commends itself to our experi- 
ence, that as lives we spring from life, 
The manifestation of ourselves is from 
something of the same nature, proceeds 
from life ; therefore we come to take a spir- 
itual view of ourselves and of the whole 
universe. 

As I walk through the fields, climb over 
the hilltops, descend the valleys, thread 
my way through the mazes of the forest, 
there is one thought that inspires me con- 
stantly. It is that I am surrounded by 
life. Silent life, but silent only because 
of the dullness of my hearing. "The won- 
derful noonday silence of a tropical forest 
is after all due only to the dullness of our 
hearing, and could our ears catch the mur- 
murs of these tiny maelstroms as they 
whirl in the innumerable myriads of living 
cells which constitute each tree, we should 
be stunned as with the roar of a great 
city." I am surrounded by life. From 
life I come ; life I express ; my companion- 
ship is life ; my environment is life ; every 
circumstance about me is life. Who shall 
say that even the rocks do not live ? Who 
shall say that the flower does not live as 



46 PERSONALITY. 

the tree lives, that life is absent from any 
phase of the declared and manifested uni- 
verse ? 

We think, and when this process of 
thinking, this manifestation of life, begins, 
we say, "God comes. ,, "I think, there- 
fore, I am." Not only that, " I think, 
therefore, I am a person;" more than that, 
" I think, therefore, God, the thinker, has 
entered me, is near me." 

Let us go back a moment and say that 
there is demanded by our reason a unity 
of God. There must be a unity of God. 
The time has gone by when men may talk 
polytheistically as of many Gods, or dualis- 
tically as of more than one universe.. The 
time has gone by when the reason will be 
satisfied with anything short of a unity of 
God. There must be a unity of purpose 
and of result along the line of the unfold- 
ing of God ; a unity of expression, of the 
unfolding of the will of God, which is only 
another way of saying there must be a 
unity of law, and men, feeling the burden 
of this necessity, are sometimes unable to 
hear the other demand of the soul, not 
only this demand of the reason that there 
shall be a unity, but the demand of the 



GOD'S SPIRIT IN MAX'S LIFE. 47 

soul that there shall be personality in this 
God, that is, goodness, character, the mer- 
ciful goodness of God. 

Oh, how men groan under this burden. 
They say, " If the will of God, like the 
wheels of a chariot, rolls on, yet the wheels 
crush out my life, the roof that shelters 
me is torn away, the noisome pestilence 
snatches the beloved child, and all this un- 
folding of the will of God shuts out the 
merciful goodness of the Father." 

But now the Holy Spirit says, "Abba, 
Father ; " " My own personal Father." 
This will is also person ; is also goodness. 
Behold the merciful goodness of God, for, 
even while in the onward movement the 
physical life is crushed, the spiritual life 
is thereby made strong. I appeal to your 
own experience if this is not so, — that 
when the physical life is crushed your spir- 
itual life is not thereby made stronger, 
fuller, richer, more abundant than before ; 
if when your soul has passed through a 
process of development by suffering there 
has not been also a perfecting that could 
only be attained by suffering. 

The human soul is made like the soul of 
God, and we can only know the soul of God 
by its manifestation in Christ. 



48 PERSONALITY. 

Suffering is resistance, and the human 
soul acquires completeness and perfection 
only by the exercise of the power of re- 
sistance over all those processes which 
make life possible. 

Following this line of thought, we are 
also led to this consideration, that the his- 
toric movement is always towards spir- 
ituality. This is simply because we are 
made for spirituality. A hypothesis com- 
mends itself to us as truth by its being, 
or striving to be, a working hypothesis. I 
cannot value a theory if it will not work. 
It may be carefully expressed ; it may be 
a thing of beauty, regarded theoretically, 
but, unless it works, it is useless. It 
seems to me that the hypothesis that we 
are spirits is an hypothesis that works, — 
that not only commends itself to our rea- 
son, but works when applied to our expe- 
rience. 

In the physical process, in the light of 
the present theory of evolution, what shall 
we say ? We say this, that from the low- 
est forms of existence there is a constant 
upward movement to higher and more per- 
fect conditions, until it reaches man, and 
in reaching man it expresses itself, not 



GOD'S SPIRIT IN MAN'S LIFE. 49 

in materialistic conditions, but spiritually. 
That is, man is the talking, the thinking, 
the reasoning, the contemplative being. 
He is the spiritual being. It is the spirit- 
ual which differentiates him from all other 
forms of existence. 

Of course, I understand that there are 
many of us who do not express ourselves 
spiritually ; that the expressions of many 
of our lives scarcely go beyond the mani- 
festations of the animal life ; but we must 
know that in such a life we are not express- 
ing ourselves truly, that in such a life we 
are simply linking ourselves with the life of 
the animal kingdom. Man in his material 
embodiment may be bound up in the ele- 
ments that constitute also the life of the 
vegetable, but if so he was made to spring 
from the vegetable life into the animal life, 
and, still further, to spring out of the animal 
life, to vindicate his right of being as man, 
as spirit. 

This is true, then, of the physical pro- 
cess as it finds expression in man, and it is 
also true of the historic movement of the 
race. When the race tends toward spirit- 
uality, then it most truly lives. There was 
nothing spiritual, was there, in the cruel 



50 PERSONALITY. 

tortures of the Inquisition ? No. Nor did 
the life of the human race express itself at 
its best by such barbarities. When man 
holds his brother in the bondage of slavery 
he is not expressing his highest and best. 
Is it not so ? 

Wherever, then, the human race in its 
historic development has thrown aside those 
chains of bondage, — those experiences 
which link it with the animals, those cruel- 
ties, those oppressions, all those things 
which are " of the earth, earthy," — then it 
expresses itself most fully and completely. 
The tendency in the historic movement of 
the race is toward spirituality, and when it 
is not in that direction, then just so much 
of human life is checked and is not true to 
its ideals. We do not say that the human 
race has yet reached the highest point at- 
tainable of its spiritual development. This 
cannot be said while the hand of the bro- 
ther is on the throat of the brother. We 
are still, as a race, too prone to express the 
animality that is within us. Theologians 
call this " original sin." It is that which 
is linking us to that from which we have 
sprung, and from which we ought to ascend 
to a higher, a nobler, condition. This sim- 



GOB'S SPIRIT IN MAN'S LIFE. 5 I 

ply shows that man has not attained his 
goal, but that the onward movement is 
toward spirituality. It is not until the race, 
as a race, realizes its possible spirituality 
that it begins most truly to live. 

What is true of the race is true also of 
the individual. The human soul says, " I 
am destined for spiritual things." "As 
pants the hart for the water brooks, so pants 
my soul after thee, O God." The hunger 
and thirst after spirituality, the intense de- 
sire for holiness, the aspiration for the ful- 
fillment of the spiritual idea that the Holy 
Spirit shall build us up as individuals into 
himself, is the tendency toward spirituality 
which makes life worth living. This is the 
hypothesis which works. When you are 
striving after spirituality, then you are be- 
ginning to live. 

Here is a young man just setting out in 
life. For what purpose ? His foot is on 
the threshold of life, and he asks himself, 
" Why am I living ? " and he must give an 
answer to himself that shall satisfy him. 
No one else can give the answer for him. 
He stands alone in the world ; he is an- 
swerable to God. There is a contract be- 
tween God and him, and there is nothing 



52 PERSONALITY. 

in that contract save that he shall meet the 
conditions and requirements of his spiritual 
life. There must be an object in his life, 
a striving towards spirituality. It will not 
do for him to strive to bring to himself 
certain comforts, to attain what men call 
success, but the answer must commend it- 
self to the spirituality that is within him, 
and in so doing will commend itself to 
God. 

We were born for spirituality, for holi- 
ness, for righteousness. As the musician 
is born to express himself righteously by 
producing the harmony that is within him, 
so the human life is born to join the an- 
them of angel and archangel, to express the 
harmony that God has already placed within 
the soul. We are born for these things, 
and when we are not seeking after them 
we are thwarting God. 

The Holy Spirit comes as the manifes- 
tation of God. He comes to us as our 
energy. This energy of our souls, this 
energy that belongs to our souls, is not 
there as an accident ; it belongs there. 
This energy of the Holy Spirit in you ex- 
presses itself as inspiration. Yes, every 
human soul stands ready to be inspired, 



GOD'S SPIRIT IN MAN'S LIFE. 53 

This is a solemn truth : every soul stands 
ready to be breathed into by God, inspired 
so that God may make clear his purpose, 
his will, his unfolding of the life, his fulfill- 
ment of spirituality. Oh, let no human 
soul shut out this holiness which is striv- 
ing to inspire with truth, with light. 

We read how the Holy Spirit strove 
until he inspired the sinner David, till he 
burned out by the fire of his great holiness 
and truth many of the seeds of sin in him 
who was both murderer and sinner against 
God, till, as the result of that inspiration, 
we have some of those beloved Psalms, 
which serve as balm to your souls and 
mine. See how this same Holy Spirit 
strove with the persecuting Saul, to inspire 
him, to stay him in his persecuting jour- 
ney, to strike him to the very earth, as 
sometimes he does strike other souls to the 
earth, that he may make the persecuting 
Saul the adoring Paul. He is taking away 
your treasures, calling a halt to your on- 
ward movement, that he may inspire you 
to turn from your cold-heartedness into an 
adoring and loving child. 

The day of inspiration will never cease. 
God is as ready now to inspire your soul 



5 4 PERSONA LITY. 

and mine as he was to inspire Isaiah, or 
David, or Paul, and because we do not re- 
ceive his inspiration is not that God is 
not ready and waiting to give it, but be- 
cause we still let our hearts remain hearts 
of ice, and will not receive sufficient melt- 
ing influence. 

In one of the glaciers near Chamounix 
the hand of man has cut a grotto. You 
may live within that grotto, as some men 
have cut within their own souls a chamber 
of retreat wherein they live. The sun in 
heaven does not shed its rays into that 
grotto of ice, and the Sun of Righteous- 
ness does not reach the chamber cut by 
men in their souls. Yet it is not man's 
normal state that he should dwell so. The 
sun waits to pour down upon the life within 
that ice grotto that the life may grow and 
express itself, and the Sun of Righteous- 
ness is waiting to pour down the life-giving 
energy of his own holiness into your heart 
and mine, and is calling on you to come 
out of the ice grotto. 

He waits to inspire. He calls to life. 
His energy expresses itself as inspiration. 
He makes you to see the exceeding sinful- 
ness of sin and the superb righteousness of 



GOD'S SPIRIT IN MAN'S LIFE. 55 

God. The Holy Ghost is striving to work 
in you the fullness of the glory of Christ. 

You are going now to your homes, and 
what shall you find there ? The old life, 
with its ice grotto where you may hide 
yourselves ? Or shall you find within 
those homes a temple of the living God ? 
Shall you throw open the windows of that 
temple and let in the inspiring energy of 
the Holy Spirit, that he may burn out as 
with a fire all the dross therein ? For " our 
God is a consuming fire." 

When those windows are thrown wide, 
will you receive him, the Spirit of Truth, 
whom ye know, "for he dwelleth with 
you"? Thus you dwell with Jesus and 
with God. His holiness inspires you. 
The convicter convinces you of sin and of 
the grandeur of righteousness ; convinces 
you of the possibilities that lie within you ; 
calls to you to come up higher ; and you 
responding to that call, will you dwell with 
him who dwelleth in you, the Spirit of 
Truth whom ye know ? 



IV. 

RECONCILIATION TO GOD BY 
APPREHENSION OF GOD. 

All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to him- 
self by Jesus Christ. — 2 Cor. v. 18. 

28 June, i8gi. 



IV. 



RECONCILIATION TO GOD BY APPREHEN- 
SION OF GOD. 

The world is reconciled to God by the 
apprehension of God. The world, that is 
ffie human souls that go to make up the 
world, are to be reconciled, transformed, by 
the apprehension of the nature of the life, 
that is, the personality of God. There is 
no other way. Reconciliation is transfor- 
mation. The world must be reconciled, or 
transformed, to God through the personal- 
ity of Jesus Christ, by the apprehension of 
God. 

As the highest achievement of man is 
his own personality, that is, the realization 
of his own life, and as his truest education 
is the development of his idiosyncrasies, 
the fulfillment of every latent force that 
there is in him ; or, we might say, as the 
highest achievement of man is the preserv- 
ing intact of the only capital he ever has in 



60 PERSONALITY. 

time or in eternity, or, better, I think, the 
making the highest and best use of that 
capital, — so the personality of God tends 
ever toward its own end, that is, toward 
the fulfillment of his own purpose, which is 
none other than the reconciliation of every 
human soul to himself. 

In other words, the purpose of God, — 
toward which his own personality tends 
without conflict, because there is no con- 
flict in perfect personality, as there is con- 
flict in our imperfect personality, which is 
affected by our finite limitations, — the pur- 
pose of God is the fulfillment of his own 
life, through the spiritual processes, and 
that purpose is none other than the trans- 
formation of every human soul, of every 
phase of human life, to his own likeness. 

What a glorious sweep of truth that is, 
that as our finite personalities are tending 
through long, slow struggles toward reali- 
zation, that as man's ascent is ever 
through conflict, so God, in the infinite 
calm of absolute personality, is fulfilling 
the end of his own being, in the transfor- 
mation of every phase of human life unto 
himself. This is the truth that St. Paul 
grasped so firmly, that we are made to re- 



RECONCILIATION TO GOD. 6 1 

fleet the glory of God, to fulfill in ourselves 
the realization of the divine personality. 

Thus the reconciliation of the world is 
by the apprehension of God, because man 
is made for God, for nothing short of God. 
In our feeble struggles, our human life 
seems unreconciled to anything, even to 
itself, to its own desires, its own purposes, 
aims, and ambitions. With us human life 
is a seething caldron wherein bubble all 
sorts of efforts, and it will ever be so until 
its endeavor is upward; until its strivings 
are for ascent ; until its purposes are con- 
centrated on the one struggle that is wor- 
thy of it, namely, the realization of its own 
personality ; until it strives to enter into 
the fulfillment of its own being; until it 
be transformed, at least in its purpose, to 
the likeness of God. 

The relation between God and the soul 
is real and vital. As we realize ourselves, 
so we come into the realization of the vital 
bond that unites us with God. When we 
lose sight of that, life becomes unreal, ar- 
bitrary ; revelation, so far as we appre- 
hend it at all, becomes dramatic ; we talk 
of things about God, and fail to realize the 
nature of God himself. 



62 



PERSONALITY. 



If what I have said commends itself to 
your judgment, you will see that man's 
reconciliation is first through knowledge, 
and afterward by growth ; that we must 
know God ; that there must be to the hu- 
man soul the revelation of God, the laying 
bare of the very nature of God ; that there 
must be the declaring to the human soul of 
God, — not of things about God, but of 
God himself. 

This revelation of God is seen in the ex- 
ternal processes, those movements of life 
which we call history. For example, I 
suppose that not all the obstructing com- 
bination of the armies of man could have 
ultimately thwarted the abolition of slavery. 
We see, as a matter of fact, in those exter- 
nal processes of life, that is, in history, the 
laying bare of an eternal righteousness. 
The more carefully we try to solve the 
depths of the philosophy of history, the 
more we see that this righteousness marches 
on and may not be checked, stayed, or ulti- 
mately thwarted ; that in its own power it 
is invincible. 

As we see this in history, so, I am con- 
strained to believe, we see it in the inter- 
nal processes which we call human con- 



RECONCILIATION TO GOD. 63 

sciousness. Man feels that the call within 
himself, as soon as he stops to think, is to 
higher and still higher steeps of life ; that 
there is within him a force, a power, which 
makes for righteousness. Whenever this 
power is obstructed, hindered, or tempo- 
rarily thwarted in any way, there is a re- 
vulsion effected which is produced by that 
which is not true, so that he feels that 
there is a revelation, outside and within, of 
a power which makes for righteousness. It 
would seem, then, that because this power 
makes for righteousness it must be true, 
for that which makes for right is clearly 
true. It is not only true, but is something 
with which we have a vital kinship. Touch 
the electric current, and you have estab- 
lished a vital kinship with it, and when we 
come in contact with this righteousness in 
the historical processes, we find its result 
to be along the lines of truth. 

No man for a moment calls in question 
the truth of freedom, the falseness of sla- 
very, nor doubts that if there were right- 
eousness in the universe, it must ultimately 
crush slavery, abolish bondage, and estab- 
lish freedom. This power within man, if 
it be a power for righteousness, must es- 



64 PERSONALITY. 

tablish righteousness within him, and not 
only establish it, but in the establishing 
of it man must feel its truth. 

If we are to have our lives transformed 
to the life of the universe, or in other 
words, to be reconciled to God ; if we are 
to be brought into sympathetic contact 
with those great spiritual forces that sweep 
on through human life, we must begin in 
our study with ourselves. I may not be- 
gin from without ; I must see what is here. 
And here within me I find, or believe I 
find, a power working for righteousness, 
which brings a certain amount of satis- 
faction and peace ; and in the processes 
outside of me I see these processes also 
tending toward righteousness, and it estab- 
lishes at least the probability, within my 
mind, that there is something in the uni- 
verse absolute in its righteousness, with 
which the soul of man has a natural and a 
vital union and fellowship, so that when he 
comes into sympathetic contact with that 
life, peace follows, harmony is established, 
and progress asserts itself. 

Hence this reconciliation must first be 
by knowledge, and afterward by growth. 
Knowledge comes by reflection. I have 



RECONCILIATION TO GOD. 65 

anticipated that already. You begin to 
think about God, to reflect upon certain 
clearly recognized principles within your- 
self, and one of these principles is right- 
eousness. When a thinking man begins 
to ponder the subject of righteousness, he 
finds it to be a quality of positive truth. 
In business, men say, " Let the word be as 
good as the bond," indicating that man 
recognizes within his constitution a certain 
element of right which is of the nature of 
positive truth. Therefore this recognition 
of God in the human consciousness is first 
by reflection. Do not fear, then, the man 
who thinks. He may think perversely ; 
his thoughts may be distorted, his logic 
lame and halting ; his conclusions impo- 
tent: but it is something that the great 
depths of human thought have been stirred ; 
that the angel of reason has come and 
touched the waters of his mind ; for out of 
these depths, muddy though they may be, 
there may yet come the clear reflection of 
the divine truth. 

Reflection, then, is the first thing by 
which the human consciousness comes into 
the knowledge of God. Nurture your 
thoughts. Be not afraid of the conclusions 



66 PERSONALITY, 

to which they may carry you. The very 
first step is to open the mind's eye that it 
may get some glimpses of the divine truth. 
So the revelation of God (I may not say 
from God, because it is primarily of God) 
is the laying bare of the very nature of 
God, and that revelation comes to the hu- 
man consciousness through the avenue of 
reflection. As reflection is but a function 
of the reason, so there is another function 
of the mind which seems to me as clearly 
established as reflection, namely, the func- 
tion of faith. I believe faith to be a fac- 
ulty of the spiritual life, the soul life, just as 
truly as I consider reflection to be ; and the 
next avenue of the apprehension of God 
is through faith, where the scope of man's 
vision is enlarged, where his horizons are 
broadened, and where, resting on reason, 
he takes hold with a firmer grasp of a 
larger outpouring of truth by the exercise 
of that faculty called faith. 

Faith does not ignore reason. Reason 
is the place on which the first rung of the 
ladder rests, and faith climbs that ladder 
till it comes nearer to the face of God. 

As reflection and faith are the channels 
through which God reveals himself, so also 



RECONCILIATION TO GOD. 6/ 

are the experiences of the soul. Here is 
a little child, and he strives in his little 
childish way after righteousness. He be- 
gins to realize that there is such a thing 
as right conduct, as well as right thought, 
for children's notions are sometimes much 
clearer and truer than we imagine. This 
child begins to apprehend the very na- 
ture of the righteousness of God. He be- 
gins to realize that his little forces are be- 
ing reconciled to the great life of God, and 
as he passes through these processes* when 
he becomes old enough to think, he finds 
that he has been living as a child of God, 
and realizes that the soul experiences 
through which he is passing are teaching 
him more and more of that fullness of life 
for which his soul thirsts and is hungry, 
and he is filled, satisfied, whenever God 
comes into his heart. Watch your own 
child. See when the moment comes in his 
life that he comes to you with a new 
light that never was on sea or land shin- 
ing forth from his soul, and tells you that 
he wants to serve God ; then you see that 
there seems to come within his soul a real- 
ization of a larger and fuller life, and you 
seem to be standing in the very presence 



68 PERSONALITY. 

of God. So near to G»d are little chil- 
dren. 

When we have this revelation of God 
as it comes to us from reflection, faith, and 
soul experiences, we realize that it is in 
relations. You cannot separate God from 
life — it is absolutely inconceivable. You 
cannot, as it were, separate this life of the 
universe from relationship. Isolation is 
death. Life standing alone always dies. 
Take away from the rose the sunshine, the 
rain, the dew, the light, those many fel- 
lowships and relationships which stimulate 
its life, and you have death. 

Sometimes men begin to realize what 
sin is because it is always a cutting off, a 
separating process, a process whose logical 
end must be isolation, and therefore "the 
wages of sin is death. ,, The thief is cut 
off from companionship, the murderer is 
held behind prison bars. Every trans- 
gression of the moral and spiritual law is, 
in its result, isolation, and isolation is al- 
ways death. 

We cannot, then, have a separated God ; 
we cannot say or think that there is not 
a vital union with him. The existence of 
God must always be in relations. There 



RECONCILIATION TO GOD. 69 

is a profound philosophy in that simple 
statement, " I believe in God, Father and 
Son/' and when we undertake to establish 
the principle of the foundations of national, 
family, or church life, it must always be on 
the principle of relationships. 

This leads one to say that this revelation 
of God must also be the revelation of a 
being who exists, not for the sake of mere 
existence, of mere being, of a mere strug- 
gle for being, but for another. * This is a 
paradox which puzzles people. They have 
tried to reconcile selfishness and self-real- 
ization. But man knows that there is a 
vast difference between the two, and he 
realizes the profundity of the truth of the 
saying of our Lord : " He that loseth his 
life shall find it." The very foundation of 
self-realization is the living for another. 

Thus we find this revelation of God 
coming to us as a being in relations, and 
also as a being realizing itself for another. 
If it is to be true to human experience and 
reflection, it is not only to be a revelation 
of God in relations, and as a being exist- 
ing for another, but it is to be a revelation 
of the divine fullness as we see it in that 
precious parable of the prodigal son. Hear 



JO PERSONALITY. 

the words of the Father as he says, "Son, 
thou art ever with me, and all that I have 
is thine." All there is of God is to be 
poured out into the human soul ; the life 
of the universe is to touch the human soul 
in every phase and at every point of its 
experience, because it is the life of rela- 
tions, because it is the life of a being ex- 
isting for another ; because it is the life of 
divine fullness. Its beginnings are always 
in love. 

Reconciled to God ! Do you not see 
how it . is to be accomplished ? It is by 
the human soul lifting its face, raising its 
vision, opening its eyes, and beholding in 
clear knowledge, through reflection, faith, 
and soul experiences, the life of its Father, 
the life of him whose child he is, the life of 
him who in divine fullness and richness is 
pouring himself into his heart. It is that 
God through knowledge is developing the 
soul in the larger life which comes through 
growth, through the Christ the Son of God, 
through the mediation of the Spiri't, for it 
is a revelation of life to life, of spirit to 
spirit, of spiritual life to spiritual life. 

As man's achievement in its highest ex- 
pression is the realization of his personal- 



RECONCILIATION TO GOD. J\ 

ity, and as the personality of the universal 
life tends ever toward its own fulfillment 
in the reconciliation of all life to himself, 
so this revelation of God is in a person, 
through a person, by a person. 

The revelation of God, then, is through 
the moral order, through personal channels ; 
not through physical processes, in which, 
because of the limitations of our finite ex- 
perience and knowledge, there is, appar- 
ently, dualism, but through a moral order, 
through a person. Through personality 
God comes to the human heart in his own 
likeness. He reveals himself. Revelation 
is light, — not a reflection of light, not a 
refraction of light, even, but light itself, and 
needs no cumulative argument to sustain 
it. God lays bare his own heart, and man 
feels the power in himself that works for 
righteousness. In his own consciousness 
a man contemplates that power. His 
faith takes a larger grasp, and in that 
power he sees the divine life; and in the 
processes of his soul's experience he sees 
in that divine life the same ground of life 
and existence in himself, and beholds in 
figure the face of the personal God, his 
own Heavenly Father. 



72 PERSONALITY. 

Whenever truth becomes unfolded, then 
there is a realization of freedom. The 
whole truth gives whole freedom. There 
can be no contradiction in truth. I may 
not say, " This is of God and this is of 
nature ; " all things are of God, and every 
truth that man takes hold of in the physi- 
cal or in the spiritual processes, whether 
he calls himself scientist or philosopher, or 
whether his spiritual nature calls out and 
takes hold of a single element of truth, 
wherever truth is apprehended there is 
at least one letter that spells out ulti- 
mately, in God's good time, the very na- 
ture of God. Thus grows the alphabet 
of the knowledge of God. Nothing can 
bring about this knowledge of God, this 
reconciliation of the world, save truth in 
its absolute fullness, in its entirety. 

It seems to me that every unfolding of 
the life of God comes as naturally, as 
reasonably, as if it could not have been 
otherwise. There seems, when looked at 
aright, nothing arbitrary in this revelation 
of God, nothing unreal, nothing dramatic, 
nothing that might be changed without 
shaking the foundations of all reason, of 
all faith, without stultifying all human ex- 



RECONCILIATION TO GOD. 73 

perience, without going flatly in the face 
of all progress, for to be is to progress, 
and the soul that most truly lives is the 
soul that has taken hold most firmly of 
the very chariot wheels of the soul's devel- 
opment, and is speeding en with lightning 
pace into the very presence of him who is 
all truth. 

I stand now on the shores of Galilee, 
and I see a humble peasant approaching. 
My soul asks, as may sometimes yours, 
"Why do I call him the Son of God?" 
Why ? Because I discern in him truth 
and light ; and this is a sufficient answer. 
I enlarge that answer, however, though 
his truth needs no argument, is self-evi- 
dent : in him is the laying bare of a soul, 
of a life, of a personality, a soul that exists 
in relations, who laid the foundation of 
that glorious conception of the universal 
brotherhood of mankind. 

This same Galilean peasant, — see how 
like God he is. He needs no argument. 
He is a manifestation of truth, and the 
soul feels it in coming into his presence ; 
realizes it ; cares nothing for the argument 
from design, from the miraculous, from 
the validity or authenticity of documents ; 



74 PERSONALITY. 

stands safely in the presence of this per- 
sonality, this soul, whose very being is the 
laying bare of those principles which we 
have found to be of the very nature of 
God, — till the soul feels that it is standing 
in the preserfce of him who is none other 
than the Son of God. 

Wherever man as man, wherever the 
race as a race, has taken hold of this life 
of Jesus Christ, there has been the most 
stupendous and overwhelming onward 
movement of righteousness among men, 
and wherever men have failed to recognize 
this life of Jesus they have been overtaken 
by unrighteousness, defeat, and shame. 

Who was it that stayed the progress 
of the abolition of slavery ? It was those 
who failed most to realize the divine life 
and fellowship of this Jesus of Nazareth. 
In the name of Christianity, some, mis- 
taking the very nature of Christ, tried to 
prove the divine origin of slavery, but 
he who was larger than his creature con- 
founded the clay of his own making, and 
made his righteousness triumph, as ne- 
cessarily it always must. 

So with the individual consciousness. 
Wherever an individual soul has taken 



RECONCILIATION TO GOD. 75 

hold of this life of Jesus he has been the 
more filled with the life of God. It is a 
fair test. He who has within him the 
most of the outpouring of Jesus finds him- 
self most filled with God. Point by point 
we might show this application : as in rela- 
tionships, so in the living for another, giv- 
ing his life for others ; and as in the living 
for another, so in that larger realization 
of all life he stands in the presence of 
him who is the laying bare of truth and 
of light. 

Christ, therefore, is to me the revelation 
of God, the revelation in personality, the 
only way, it seems to me, God can come to 
my soul ; and because he is the revelation 
of God, because his life is truth and light, 
we are reconciled to God, transformed to 
God, made into the likeness of God — 
changed from glory to glory through this 
same Galilean peasant, this Jesus, the car- 
penter's son, this brother, this human 
Jesus, this Son of God, who has become 
the son of man that he might lay bare 
the life and light of his eternal Father. • 

The reconciliation of the world, then, 
is through the knowledge of God, through 
the apprehension of God, through the 



j6 PERSONALITY. 

upward conflict and struggle of the soul, 
through experiences, through the life 
of Christ ; and it is the work of the one 
Holy Spirit, who, with the Father and the 
Son, is ever one God. The soul's life, 
its beginning, its end, its destiny is in him 
in whom it finds reconciliation, by whom 
it is changed, transformed, and passes 
from glory to glory. O God, thou art my 
God. In thee is my realization ; in thee, O 
Christ, is my reconciliation ; in thee, O 
Holy Spirit, I live and can never die. 



V. 

THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 

That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. — St. John 

iii. 6. 

ii October, i8gi. 



THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 

The birth of a human soul, its growth, 
its progress, its fruition, — these are the 
thoughts which at one time or another 
command the most earnest consideration 
of every human life. There come mo- 
ments when we look into our natures to 
learn their great secrets, to understand 
what we are, to strive to solve the great 
problems which seem to confront us. It is 
a moment when one seems to say to him- 
self : " There is something more in me 
than nerve, muscle, bone, sinew, and flesh. 
There is something in me more than that 
which makes me kin to other growths, 
whether physical or of another sort, in the 
natural world ; " a moment when one seems 
to say to himself, "That which men call 
a soul I think I have," and the instant that 
thought comes to a man he is asking him- 
self, " What is this soul ? What is its end ? 



80 PERSONALITY. 

How does it come? How does it grow? 
What are the stages of its progress ? 
What is its destiny ? " 

I do not say that this is a joyful moment 
in any man's life. Sometimes it is an hour 
of great pain, this hour of introspection, 
of self-realization ; this moment when there 
is crowded upon him the necessity of a 
great question, of the demand of a great 
answer. " What am I ? " " What am I to 
be ? " I sympathize most profoundly with 
the agony of such moments. I think I un- 
derstand somewhat of the pain of such an 
hour, and it is because I wish to soothe that 
pain — not to remove the cause of the pain, 
but, by giving greater strength, that from 
within the soul may rise above its pain till 
it cease in its torture — that I ask you to 
think with me for a moment something of 
the nature of this soul. 

It is a common heritage that we have. 
Your soul and mine are fundamentally 
alike. It is a common stream of everlast- 
ing life that pours through your soul, 
through mine. It is a common story there 
told, a common experience we share, a 
common struggle we make. Together we 
live, together we struggle for life, together 



THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 8 1 

through soul-trials we may reach the con- 
summation ; so that what I read within my 
soul must be, to a great extent, true of 
yours ; what you read in yours must be 
capable of serving me. 

Here is a soul ; whence it comes we ask 
not, but, if an institution is the lengthened 
shadow of a man, so is the human soul the 
prolonged life of the centuries. It bears 
the mark of ancestry, that mysterious law 
of heredity. It is the gathering up of much 
which has, gone before. A man lives the 
life of his ancestors, finds within himself 
powers, and energies, and impulses, and 
tendencies which startle him in their mani- 
festation. He cannot tell whence he has 
come.- He only regards himself here as 
the beginning of a great soul striving to 
express itself. Marked by the avalanche, 
so to say, of histories preceding him, by 
many generations and centuries, there are 
great lines left upon his soul, as on the 
mountain sides the sliding glacier has left 
its deep cuts ; preceding histories and cen- 
turies have engraved themselves upon it, so 
that every human soul bears somewhat of 
that which has gone before. 

The realization of this sometimes over- 



82 PERSONALITY. 

whelms him. He is stunned by the great 
forces that are contending within him. 
Sometimes it is a force of great brilliancy, 
and as a little child he manifests powers 
which are stupendous. Fancy a great poet, 
almost before his infant lips can speak 
without lisping, expressing thoughts that 
must strike those who listen to him by 
reason of their unusual power. How came 
this child to such knowledge, never having 
learned ? How is it sometimes with the 
soul of a little child ? He seizes the brush 
and paints, and produces on the canvas a 
work powerful in its majesty, its brilliancy, 
exceeding the work of other men who have 
toiled for years without reaching such re- 
sults. How is it sometimes that those of 
mathematical powers, powers of invention, 
powers of discovery, seize the hidden 
forces of nature and tear aside the veil 
that hides the great mysteries of life and 
discovery, and reveal to admiring and won- 
dering eyes secrets never dreamed of ? No 
man seems to be able to solve this. Suffice 
it to say, that there is a piling up of great 
powers and forces through generations and 
centuries by this which we call the law of 
heredity. God is working in a mysterious 
way " his wonders to perform." 



THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 83 

So you find sometimes within yourselves 
forces that startle you and confound you. 
Sometimes these forces lead you into great 
sin ; sometimes they help you to a sublime 
sense of spirituality and to great demands 
in righteousness. Sometimes they hurry 
you to crime, or lead you into philanthropic 
fields, where with the hand of blessing you 
comfort all those who come within the reach 
of your holy and gentle life. In the one 
case, as much as in the other, you are star- 
tled, stunaed, by the powers and forces that 
are there. In the one case you are able to 
see clearly where other men do not see, or 
are blind where every one is crying out : 
"Do you not see? Is it not beautiful ? " 
stumbling, halting, creeping, where other 
men are walking with strong, mighty 
strides. In the one case, as in the other, 
you are at a loss to account for the forces 
that are within you. 

The realization of this seems to me to be 
the coming to the birth of a soul. " That 
which is born of the Spirit is spirit." No 
man knows how it is born, where it is born, 
what is the process through which it passes. 
The soul manifests itself and we see the 
manifestation, but more we cannot tell. 



84 PERSONALITY. 

We do know this, that here is a ground of 
courage, of hope, of pity, of charity. 

When I see a soul beating against the 
bars of its cage, striving, longing for free- 
dom, yearning to take the wings of* the 
morning that it may fly where it may 
reach its true atmosphere, though the beat- 
ing against those bars be what is called sin, 
however bitter the struggle, though it crip- 
ple and wound the poor soul striving, pant- 
ing for its life, yet I shall be filled both 
with pity and with hope ; then, though I 
see the soul steeped in its blood because of 
this beating and striving, see it overcome 
apparently, thrown back upon itself by rea- 
son of its sin, yet I shall say, " It is born 
for escape, for freedom," and I shall have 
a ground of hope th^t the bars shall one 
day be broken, and the soul shall escape to 
its greatest liberty. 

Your souls are struggling. Yes, the 
souls of the greatest saints of whom we 
know anything have struggled. St. Paul 
looks within himself and finds there forces 
warring one with one another, and how great 
is his distress ! How all the great spirits of 
earth are staggered by what they see within 
themselves ! Even these forces within man 



THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 85 

may be perverted, but still they are great 
forces. The force that leads a man to sin 
may yet become the power that shall lead 
him to holiness. The force may be latent, 
but thefe it is, and the power stuns, or the 
lack of power confuses and confounds, and 
as a weakness or as a strength seems to 
strike the soul with awe as it asks the ques- 
tion, " What am I ? " Those forces which 
St. Paul found warring within him brought, 
I doubt not, great discouragement, as when 
he says : " What I would, that do I not ; but 
what I hate, that do I." So to-day there 
are many who are thrown back upon them- 
selves in a long and apparently fruitless 
struggle for life, and become faint-hearted, 
discouraged, cast to the earth in despair. 
But it is not right for us to be discouraged, 
faint-hearted, conquered by despair, for 
we are not alone. Every soul in one way 
or another has been thus torn by the war- 
ring within. This is no new conflict, no 
new panting, no new effort, no new mani- 
festation of strange powers as they come 
to the surface. It is the bubbling up of 
the great wellspring of life striving for an 
outlet here through the reeds or grasses 
of forbidding and hindering conditions, 



86 PERSONALITY. 

there bursting the banks of law, but finally 
settling into its rightful channel. 

Here are the great streams of tendency 
that have been pouring themselves through 
human souls down all the centuries, and 
now they come within our souls. There, 
perchance, they seem to throw off only 
currents of sin and death. No, they are 
the streams of life, and are persistent in 
their manifestations, and wall sooner or 
later burst the bounds that seem to hem 
in the soul, and the soul shall yet find its 
expression. It is where your soul, though 
now, apparently, dammed up, limited, 
hedged about by that which seems to be 
altogether of sin, of obstruction, of death, 
shall one day, nay must, by the very per- 
sistence of all streams as they come from 
mountain fastnesses and find their level in 
the ocean, find its complete entire devel- 
opment and fruition. It is the gospel of 
good cheer that Christ preached when say- 
ing in another figure : " Be of good cheer, I 
have overcome the world." It is the gos- 
pel of good tidings which he preaches when 
he says : " I am come that ye may have life, 
and have it more abundantly." It is the 
gospel of good tidings that the lifestream. 



THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 87 

coming from the one source of all life, 
coursing through human souls, shall ex- 
press itself. Let him that will, drink of 
the fountain of life ; it is there for all to 
partake. 

Sometimes this moment of realization 
comes to a man in his childhood, sometimes 
not till middle age, sometimes not till far 
advanced in old age. But come one day 
or another it surely does. Forces within 
him contend, warring forces, jarring ele- 
ments, all striving for harmony, peace, har- 
monious expression ; yet such a tangled 
skein is the life of human souls that we 
seem to lose all hope that the thread of life 
may ever be discovered, or that our lives 
may ever become peaceful, or the music 
of our soul, the anthem of the praise of a 
great life, ever be restored. But to all such, 
to all who are in an apparent state of hope- 
less jargon, shall come a stirring of the great 
depths ; out of it all shall come a realization 
of what they are capable ; they shall awake 
to the fact that they have a soul, and when 
they come to that glorious moment of awak- 
ening, then they strive to prove their souls. 

Remember, as you must, that the stream 
of remote generations has poured itself 



88 PERSONALITY. 

into you, and through you it shall find its 
channel, and shall one day justify its be- 
ing. So we sometimes see our dearest 
friends go down, lost from sight, into the 
bogs of wasted life, dissipation, sin, yes 
and crime, and what are we to say? Say 
only this, that the soul has gone down into 
the depths, only one day to appear again 
to find he is a soul; and when that mo- 
ment comes, the remainder of his days are 
passed in the effort to assert it and in the 
striving for its realization. 

There is no soul that can be lost ; the 
Father's eye is sleepless, and watches over 
every spiritual being that he has called 
into existence. Nothing beclouds his vi- 
sion. We may shut out our view and no 
longer raise our eyes to see the Father's 
face. By the mists of our indifference, by 
the great thick darkness of our willful 
transgression, we may shut out from our 
souls the light of his countenance, but his 
eve ever discerns the soul which is his, the 
child of his own creating. 

Then the moment of the struggle of 
realization comes. 

" I go to prove my soul ! 
I see my way as birds their trackless way. 



THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 89 

I shall arrive ! What time, what circuit first, 

I ask not : but unless God send his hail 

Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow, 

In some time, his good time, I shall arrive : 

He guides me and the bird. In his good time ! " 

Oh, in ascending the mountain one foot 
of the climber is always lagging, and when 
that lagging foot speaks it speaks of de- 
spair ; it says : " Once I was leading, once 
I was achieving. I placed myself on firm 
ground, and there was the upward move- 
ment, progress, and acquisition, and the 
joy that came in that feeling of spiritual 
attainment ; but now, lagging far behind, 
overcome, apparently, by the difficulty of 
the ascent, I am in despair." Oh, how 
many such souls there are to-day, men who 
strive to live, to climb ! Now they say : 
"It is useless ; I have slipped back; these 
forces have pulled me down, thrust me 
back ; I have no power of holiness within 
me." But it is but the lagging foot, No 
greater obstacle confronts you now than in 
the past ; the movement of the soul is ever 
upward and onward, though, apparently, 
at times it may seem to be downward, and, 
therefore, seem to be hopeless. 

Physical temptation comes to you again, 
and with shattered nerve you go down the 



90 PERSONALITY. 

hill of your dissipation, and what do you 
say ? Oh, say that the day is yet to dawn, 
the nerves are yet to grow strong, renewed 
health is to come to you, God is leading 
you through a soul process no more diffi- 
cult to endure than that through which 
you have already passed. Be of good 
cheer. "That which is born of the Spirit 
is spirit." The process is painful, but it is 
sure. Courage, now and always ! I deeply 
sympathize with the one whose physical 
temptation masters him again and yet 
again, but you rest in the sure knowledge 
that it is yet to pass, you are yet to be set 
free. Or the mental trial comes, and the old 
doubts reassert themselves, but once again 
the Father's face, through the fog of your 
mental difficulty, is yet to shine. The 
spiritual temptations assert themselves 
over and over again, till in the slough of 
utter helplessness you seem to be lost. 
But the soul is still passing through pro- 
cesses and a larger hold upon spiritual life 
is yet to be yours. 

Can you afford, then, to give up the 
striving ? Do you not realize how these 
forces are within you, that they shall yet 
find an awakening, that you shall discover 



THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 9 1 

your soul has growth and progress, and that 
the progress cannot be without these in- 
spiring soul-catastrophes ? There cannot 
be the great mountain ascents without the 
striving and without descents into the val- 
leys intervening between the hills. There 
cannot be great strides of progress without 
the lagging foot, without discouragements. 
Discouragement is a part of the process of 
progress. 

Do you not see, then, that the soul 
grows not as trees or flowers, though these 
serve as an analogy ? The tree does not 
sink as it rises, save as it thrusts down its 
roots till it finds the moisture, the nourish- 
ment, its life requires. But with the soul 
there is a going back, but only that the now 
lagging foot shall soon spring forward. 

So, at one time or another in his life, 
the moment of realization, of soul-striving, 
comes to a man. It is a time, however, of 
pruning, of cutting back the life, of put- 
ting in the curb and bridle, the time of 
checking, of a formative process where the 
forces of the soul are to be shown their 
highest and best development, and these 
processes cannot be without pain, and mo- 
ments of discouragement, suffering, and 



92 PERSONALITY. 

momentary despair. If. the marble shrieks 
as the biting chisel forms to greater beauty 
the angel that is yet hidden, so there cannot 
be the formative process of our soul's life 
without pain, suffering, sorrow. But that 
process leads, by reason of the forces at 
work, to higher and still higher manifesta- 
tions. These processes of the soul are to 
lead to the time of fruition. It is a great era 
in the soul's life first, when it awakes to its 
realization ; second, when it strives after ex- 
pression ; and still a greater era w T hen the 
soul sees itself bear fruit. It is the stage of 
its fruition, when it begins to bless, to help, 
to encourage, to stimulate, to vitalize other 
souls. 

Oh, what a blessed moment of soul-ex- 
perience when the life that is within you 
is giving life to others ! What is it that 
has exalted Jesus to the great throne 
whereon he blesses other souls, and at 
whose foot souls lift their hearts in ador- 
ing praise ? It is the \\iz that has streamed 
from the source of all life into his great 
soul, so filling him to the full in complete 
realization of all the vitalizing forces of hu- 
man life, that he pours out from this over- 
flowing fountain of spiritual attainment the 



THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 93 

riches and the richness of an exalted life, 
of a life that finds its complete oneness 
in him, the author of our being, the source 
of eternal life, — God. 

As this fruition shows itself in Christ 
so it does in other souls. What has some- 
times given you courage but the blessing 
of a mother's great life, or the tender spirit 
of your father ? What is it that has some- 
times given you renewed hope and a strong 
grasp upon the great effort your soul is 
making to- attain higher flights of spiritual 
being, but the outpouring of the full life of 
some friend who has himself gone down 
through those dark, hideous valleys, who 
has taken the warring elements in his soul 
and brought them out of chaos into order, 
out of confusion into harmony, so stemmed 
the great tide of contending streams within 
his soul as to give them the proper current 
and manifestation of their being ? This 
great soul of your friend, now having 
reached, in its progress, fruition, is pouring 
out upon you the greatness of his own 
life. Such was St. Paul's. What animates 
the world in the influence he has poured 
out but the fruition of that life ? he found 
in the beginning these warring forces, he 



94 PERSONALITY. 

strove that he might so preach that he 
himself might not be a castaway, he saw 
the great value of his soul, and pressed to- 
ward the mark that he might win the crown 
of everlasting life ; and in the winning of 
that crown, see how he has been a fruitful 
blessing to generations then unborn, so 
marvelous are the ways of the Spirit, — for 
"that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. ,, 

The day of your fruition, perchance, is 
dawning now. I know not but it may be 
high noon in some of your souls. You 
may not know it either. The greatest 
souls have not known when the hour of 
their fruition had come. They did not 
know that the midday light was shining in 
them, did not realize that they were being 
life-giving to other souls. It may be now 
in the moment when you are suffering 
most that you are in the full blaze of a 
glorious day of fruition, and are blessing 
other lives most abundantly. 

There stands a soul. Oh, how precious 
it is, what forces are centred within it ! 
See how the souls of many centuries have 
poured themselves into it. Shall you not, 
as you contemplate your soul, take courage ? 
Shall you not be unwearied in your effort 



THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 95 

to assert it, to seek its highest and best real- 
# ization ? Shall you not count all this pain, 
discouragement, and despair as nothing, 
as only the price you would gladly pay 
for the great joy and privilege of one day 
so bearing fruit that other weak, thirsting 
souls may from you find new courage, 
strength, hope ? Are you not willing to 
pay this price, willing to suffer that others 
may be strong, willing to live and take 
great holds upon life that you may bless 
those who with you are panting to get free, 
struggling against the bars of their prison- 
house to let their souls soar to greater 
heights ? 

Do you not believe that the crucified 
Lord must have had a joy unspeakable in 
knowing that from him there was flowing, 
as his blood streamed down, a life-giving 
current which was to vitalize all spiritual 
beings world without end ? Do you not 
believe that St. Paul was entirely sincere 
as he recounted shipwreck, the bitterness 
of foe, the falseness of friends, much of 
suffering, and rated them as nothing for 
the joy that was set before him, the joy of 
being a blessing and a life-giving energy 
to generations yet to come ? 



g6 PERSONALITY. 

It is thus I appeal to you to prove your 
souls. I will not appeal to the cowardly 
side of your nature. Do not lose your 
grasp ; do not be overcome by despair; do 
not think that you are not ascending the 
mount of spiritual attainment. The lag- 
ging foot is yet to be the foremost one. 
It may be the very one which is first to 
press itself upon the very summit of spirit- 
ual attainment. 

The growth, the progress, the fruition 
of the human soul — oh, what a marvelous 
unfolding it is to see ! And in that unfold- 
ing let us trust, for it is God who calls the 
soul into being, who. is shaping its desti- 
nies, who is ever calling, " Friend, come up 
higher." It is still God, the suffering, cru- 
cified God, who is calling, " I am come that 
you may have life, and have it more abun- 
dantly." " Be of good cheer, because I 
live/ye shall live also." 

Oh, you must be of good cheer, for 
Christ is in you, ever in you, always in 
you, the hope of glory, your hope now and 
forever. 



VI. 
THE DIVINE SURPRISES. 

So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed 
into the ground ; and should sleep, and rise night and 
day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he know- 
eth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of her- 
self; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn 
in the ear. — St. Mark iv. 26. 

8 March, i8gi. 



VI. 

THE DIVINE SURPRISES. 

In the fourth chapter of the Gospel ac- 
cording to St. Mark, at the 26th verse, is 
that familiar parable where our Lord says, 
" So is the kingdom of God, as if a man 
should cast seed into the ground ; and 
should sleep, and rise night and day, and 
the seed should spring and grow up, he 
knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth 
forth fruit of herself ; first the blade, then 
the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." 
And all the time that this parable has been 
ringing in our ears, down through many 
centuries, we have been slow to understand 
that the kingdom of God is within us, and 
that the spiritual development of the soul 
is after its own laws, is always an un- 
folding, and is always looking on to the 
best that is yet to be. It is hard for us to 
accept this, and the parable receives a deaf 
ear, for we have fancied that our soul 



IOO PERSONALITY. 

might grow in our way, and we have fan- 
cied sometimes, in moments of despair, 
that the best has already been, and that 
the future is without hope, and when those 
great processes of spiritual growth occur, 
the soul, stunned, is scarcely prepared to 
receive them. 

The soul in its spiritual growth and de- 
velopment has laws of its own, for the 
kingdom of God is as if a man should cast 
seed into the ground and should sleep, or 
with anxious watchfulness should rise day 
and night, and give it every care, and 
scratch away the earth, to watch, impatient, 
the beginning of the growth ; but the seed 
groweth on, and he knoweth not how. 
With all his skill and anxiety he cannot 
tell how, but the seed grows, because the 
earth bringeth forth fruit of herself, and 
there is first the blade, but the blade does 
not know what is coming after. 

The little green growth, as it forces its 
way through the soil, is not prepared for 
the great surprises of its own development ; 
it is not prepared for the beautiful verdure 
of the green field caused by its own shoot- 
ing up, nor even then for a still further 
development ; for now comes the ear with 



THE DIVINE SURPRISES. IOl 

its promises of even further development ; 
with its promises of great usefulness, of 
some time furnishing food for the eater. 
And even then greater surprises are still 
in store, for the ear can scarcely guess, — 
this little ear of wheat not yet developed, 
just heavy enough to bend the stem on 
which it is growing, — it is scarcely pre- 
pared for the still further surprises of the 
full wheat, or corn, in the ear, and men and 
women, following this same thought, begin 
to realize that there is within them some- 
thing of divine, Godlike possibility. 

It is a strange experience when this re- 
alization first comes. It does not come 
often until there has been something of 
pain and anguish, corresponding, possibly, 
to the pain and anguish which the seed 
may experience. When first put into the 
repellent earth, and before the warm ger- 
minating influences of the soil have been 
felt, there comes the process of disintegra- 
tion, of decay, and the seed suffers, as it 
were, while being torn limb from limb ; 
but all this suffering, all this disintegration, 
makes the little seed grow and shoot up 
away from this misery and suffering. So 
when the disintegrating process comes to 



102 PERSONALITY. 

us, there comes the realization of new life. 
Long before the sunlight, even, is seen, the 
life comes, while buried beneath the earth, 
as the little shoot pushes its way to the 
surface. Before we come to any realization 
of the strength of that great potency which 
is now at work within us, there is a growth, 
and it is a true growth. No true growth 
can be godless, because all growth begins 
from the root, and this is the true spiritual 
beginning, the true spiritual growth and 
development. 

Now come the surprises, and men begin 
to realize that there is a reality to their 
own peculiarity, and discover that there are 
certain lines along which this reality is 
going, certain lines of development, certain 
processes of individuation ; just as, if we 
were to look at this little germ long before 
it pushes its way above the surface, we 
should see that it was unlike any germ that 
ever before has striven to come to the sun- 
light. 

In all the vast domain of life there is no 
repetition ; every speck, every atom, every 
molecule, every minute particle of life, has 
its own special property and peculiarity. 
It is as if a child should take the mud that 



THE DIVINE SURPRISES. 1 03 

it plays with to build a little house, and 
cut off here and there little bricks and 
stones, and every one of them were separate 
from the other, not one like another ; so 
there is a process of individuation, separa- 
tion, and with it development and growth. 

I speak this in order that the soul, when 
it comes to the realization of its life, may 
not look for the same life in another soul. 
It does not look to other souls to see what 
are the surprises in store for it. Because 
one man has had one experience, because 
another soul has manifested itself in this 
way, it does not follow that this soul shall 
have the same experience and pass through 
the same processes. There should be no 
mistake. No soul should think of imitat- 
ing another soul. 

And now that every soul may look for 
still further surprises, what a surprise it 
is to some souls to find that they have 
distinction ; that they have peculiar powers ; 
that they may by their influence do some- 
thing for other souls. It is one of the 
divine surprises. The surprise is when 
the little green growth comes above the 
earth's surface and finds that it is making 
the whole earth beautiful with its rich ver- 



1 04 PERSONA LITY. 

dure. Its beauty is not the beauty of the 
forest, of the hothouse growth, of the sky 
brilliant with sunset gorgeousness, but it 
has its own peculiar beauty. So the soul 
that finds that it has distinction is now 
ready to realize that it must be true to this 
surprise, to its own individuality, its own 
distinction, and will have nothing now of 
imitation, of striving to be like other souls. 
It will say to itself, " Be true to thine own 
self. Now let me seek for the distinction 
for which God has created me." 

You this morning are looking to know 
what shall be your life, as he who should 
rise in the night ; yet the seed grows, he 
knows not how. It is not wise foil us to 
ask what shall be our lives. "Sufficient 
unto the instant is the evil thereof." Our 
lives are hid with Christ in God, as the 
seed was hid in the mother earth, as the 
development was still hid in the tender 
arms of the sunlight and watered by the 
gentle dews from heaven. It is not best 
for us to ask what our lives shall be, but to 
be true to the present life and await with 
gentle expectancy still further surprises and 
developments. 

Life is truest when it is most uncon- 



THE DIVINE SURPRISES. 1 05 

scious. Do not be eager to know what 
your life is. Love loses its genuine ring 
when it knows that it is love. Virtue 
seems to be masquerading when it parades 
itself as virtue. Patriotism, when it sings 
its own praises, is not worthy of the name 
of patriotism. Whenever the soul realizes 
that it is alive, that moment there is a di- 
minishing of the life. To illustrate : There 
have been supreme moments in your life 
when to others you seemed to live and to 
fairly glow with life as never before. In 
that unconscious manifestation of your soul 
you were more truly alive than ever before, 
as St. Paul caught up to the seventh heaven, 
or as the soul of the mother, bending over 
the cot on which the child lies wasting with 
sure and dreadful disease, manifests most 
truly the love that is within her, yet uncon- 
sciously. So the originality, the individua- 
tion, the distinction, the separateness passes 
on, and as the little shoot becomes the 
blade, as the tender growth develops into 
the larger leaf, there comes the realization 
of the continuity of life. It is the same cur- 
rent of life passing through the grown ear 
that there was in the first sprouting, that 
there was in the seed beneath the earth, 



106 PERSOXALITY. 

and this continuity of life breathes itself 
through all the forms of existence so that 
when men have become living souls it has 
been called inspiration. It is indeed in- 
spiration, this great force of the universe 
breathing itself through nature. " So is 
the kingdom of God, as if a man should 
cast seed into the ground, and it should 
spring and grow up, he knoweth not how." 

This inspiration, this breathing through 
human souls, may not be limited by either 
time, place, or character of the individual. 
As God breathed through the prophets, 
and into him, the last of the prophets, 
that is, into his own true Son until in 
him was the fullness of the Godhead bod- 
ily, God breathed into you that you may 
become more and more living souls by 
this inspiration illuminating your hearts 
and mind, till you see things hitherto hid, 
till you feel things before unknown, till 
you are imbued with strength hitherto not 
suspected, and this divine surprise of in- 
spiration hi the individual is an indication 
also of the further surprises in store. 

If you, as an individual soul, are not 
bigger, fuller of divine power and inspira- 
tion, than you were five or ten years ago, 



THE DIVINE SURPRISES. IO/ 

it is because this process of growth has 
been hindered or thwarted by your own 
rebellious interference — as if the farmer 
who has sown the seed should untimely 
scratch away the earth and hinder the 
germ's expansion, or later on, heedless of 
law, should walk rough-shod, as men some- 
times do, over this early verdure and 
thwart its development. And if, I say, 
you are not fuller of divine love, more 
inspired by God, nearer to bearing fruit, 
it is because you have interfered with the 
seed of the soul as it was struggling on 
and up towards its development and fruit- 
age. 

So with mankind at large. If 1890 is 
not better than 1790, and if each decade 
is not better than the preceding one, it is 
because we have interfered as a race with 
those processes of growth and develop- 
ment which God ever has in store for us. 

As this is true, so we listen expectantly 
to what perchance we call new laws ; not 
new, although it is a new law to the trem- 
bling stalk as it finds itself developing into 
the wheat, but the law was always there. It 
came as an inspiration. So with great ex- 
pectancy we listen for new laws, and mea- 



108 PERSONALITY. 

sure the truthfulness of those laws only 
by their fruits. If they minister to the life, 
cure the diseases of the soul, make the life 
larger, greater, and truer, then are they ac- 
cepted as an inspiration of God. 

Fixedness in creed, in belief, in any- 
thing that is spiritual, is fatal. Look at 
the civilization of Egypt and see how crys- 
tallization binds it hand and foot. We 
must live in God, for God, and with God, 
and expect the surprises of development 
and growth. 

How surprised John the Baptist must 
have been at the breaking up of his spirit- 
ual nature ! How the great life-blood cours- 
ing though his veins must have astonished 
him, as with power he preached the com- 
ing of the great Messiah ! How St. Paul 
must have been staggered, — Paul, the tent- 
maker, with his scholarly logic, — how it 
must have astonished him to find himself 
endued with a power to turn the world 
upside down ! and yet this upheaval of his 
spiritual life that burst the graveclothes 
of his theism was the divine surprise ac- 
cording to the great divine principle of in- 
spiration. 

We speak of the onward progress of the 



THE DIVINE SURPRISES. IOg 

Christian Church. It has not accomplished 
the one thousandth part of the realization 
in store for it. Why ! imagine ten men 
endued with a Holy Ghost ; twenty or a 
hundred men expecting this kingdom of 
God, prepared for its distinction, prepared 
for its inspirations, for its realization, then 
try to imagine the leavening influence in 
any community. If each one who has real- 
ized it would touch with this inspired 
power of God the soul that is next to him 
so that the whole mass might be ablaze 
with the divine fervor, souls knit to souls 
in a kindling inspiration that should burn 
out the sin of the race, and leave mankind 
refined of its dross, — shining metal, pure 
gold, — then I say the best is yet to be, 
must be. 

Thus for you in all your sorrows, your 
sins, your disappointments, despairs, afflic- 
tions, the best is yet to be. Expect these 
surprises, welcome these experiences, be 
glad of these processes ; for the earth 
bringeth forth fruit of herself. God is in 
his heaven. God is working with you ; we 
are fellow-workers with God. I see souls 
grasping with feebleness the truth, and I 
bid them to look on, and look up, and realize 



1 1 PERSONALITY. 

that we have but guessed what we may yet 
be. At present be true to your growth, 
to these laws, to this divine germ, and then 
await the surprises. Life shall come as a 
bright beam from heaven penetrating the 
dark recesses of the hidden chamber of 
your soul, and shall quicken into growth 
the divine seed. You shall grow, though 
you know not how. Without impatient ex- 
pectancy disturbing the influences of the 
soul, its development, its growth, there 
is now a gentleness hitherto unknown, a 
forgiveness you did not suppose possible, 
and still you live unconscious of this virtue 
that has come within you, a blessing to 
those with whom you come in contact, 
and still you live on, expecting more and 
more of the divine surprises. 

Men, women, look up, look on, "for the 
kingdom of God is as if a man should cast 
seed into the ground, and the seed should 
spring up. For the earth bringeth forth 
fruit of herself, first the blade, then the ear, 
then the full corn in the ear." 

Your life is hid, safely hid with God. 
Let it grow. Let it spread, and as the great 
tree, its leaves shall be for the healing of 
the nations. 



VII. 

SUFFERING. 

For it became him to make the captain of their salva- 
tion perfect through sufferings. — Heb. ii. 10. 

ji May, i8gi. 



VII. 

SUFFERING. 

Let me say this again, not quite in the 
same words. It was the expression of the 
will of God in leading many of his children 
unto their destiny, that is. unto blessedness, 
unto glory, to make Jesus, the Captain of 
their salvation, perfect, that is, fully de- 
veloped as to his soul, his spiritual life, 
through sufferings. 

Behold, then, the outpouring, the mani- 
festation, of the eternal will of God. We 
behold it, we note it, and the record we 
thus make of this observed operation of 
the will of God we call law. So that it 
seems to be the law of God, that is, the will 
of God in operation, that, in the full and 
complete development of man as a spiritual 
being, suffering shall be a process through 
which the soul acquires character. We do 
not venture to say that this stands in the 
relation of cause and effect. I do not pre- 
sume to say that suffering causes char- 



1 1 4 PERSONALITY, 

acter. I only note that, as the soul passes 
through suffering, character follows when 
other spiritual laws are obeyed. 

Behold the " Man of Sorrows," ac- 
quainted with grief. On the grassy slopes 
of Galilee there walks a man acquainted 
with poverty. " He had not where to lay 
his head." A few friends attach them- 
selves to him. By reason of his life, the 
purity of his soul, he is as a magnet to 
draw spiritual beings into his presence ; 
but even these forsake him, and he is 
left alone, without companionship, without 
friends. Later on comes the pain of mis- 
representation. He is- not a gluttonous 
man, nor a wine-bibber, nor is he one who 
would cringe or fawn in the presence of 
the rich ; but he is so represented. It is 
said of him that he was a gluttonous man 
and a wine-bibber. It was as false to say 
this of him as to say of some honest spirits 
to-day that they are tricky, dishonest, and 
false to their trust, or of some gentle 
spirits that they have been cruel and base. 
Men will be misrepresented, and he suffers 
this. He chooses some intimate friends, 
enfolds them to his heart in the intimacy 
of love and profound friendship, but one of 



SUFFERING. 1 1 5 

them becomes a traitor, and for only thirty 
pieces of silver, till his name has rung 
through the centuries as the synonym of 
infamy, and one can say no worse of an- 
other than that he is a Judas. Yet this 
same gentle soul drinks cf that bitterness, 
that dreg of the cup of human sorrow, the 
feeling that he has been the cause of the 
sin of another. Can you fancy any greater 
suffering than this, to believe that you 
have caused the spiritual loss of another? 
Sometimes when I picture to myself the 
sufferings of this Jesus, it seems to me 
that there is no dreg in the cup so bitter, 
so hard to drink, as the feeling, the belief, 
that one has been the cause of the spirit- 
ual loss of another. Soon the cross awaits 
its victim. The bed-ridden sufferer knows 
something of this physical agony, knows 
how hard it is to lie for years, perhaps, 
upon a bed of pain. Now, see the uplift- 
ing cross ; the nerves are tortured, the 
burning thirst consumes the life, the rack- 
ing pain distorts the features. Yet this is 
not all. Greater suffering^ than this phy- 
sical pain is endured. The heavens are 
darkened, as in many souls since the veil 
of despair has dropped ; even the face of 



1 1 6 PERSONALITY. 

God seems to be shut out. "My God, 
why hast thou forsaken me ! " The very 
depth of human woe is reached. Now 
is the very birth-throe of the soul, for in 
the very next instant it comes into the 
full realization of itself. "Thy will, not 
mine, be done;" like a mighty flood 
there rushes into his soul the will of God, 
and he is at one with his Father. 

Thus briefly have I tried to bring before 
your minds the agony, both physical and 
mental, of this Jesus, the Captain of our 
salvation. 

Now, what he experienced must all the 
more truly be experienced by every soul 
reaching the sublime heights of his^ great- 
ness. If he, through the greatest suffer- 
ing, is made perfect, how shall we expect 
to enter into the full development and 
realization of our souls, apart from this law 
of suffering? Again I do not venture to 
say that this is cause and effect, but that 
there seems to be a certain law operative 
in the spiritual process along which life is 
developed by suffering. 

Notice that the end of the human soul 
is not pleasure. You were not made that 
you might participate in pleasure, — ■ this 



SUFFERING. W] 

is not the highest expression of your life ; 
you were made for something higher than 
that, for blessedness, for the full develop- 
ment of character, to enter into the full 
realization, completion, and fulfillment of 
the powers of the ideal soul. 

Character, then, is the one aim of man, 
that is, life. " I am come that ye may 
have life, and have it more abundantly.'' 
You were not made for pleasure, nor that 
you might escape from pain, but for life, 
for character, for blessedness. " Blessed 
are they that mourn." That is, the happi- 
ness of the fulfilled and developed soul is 
in store for those who mourn, that blessed- 
ness for which we were created, destined. 
If we shall keep clearly in mind the end 
and destiny for which the human soul is 
called into being, then I think we shall be 
capable of looking at this question of pain 
in a very different light. Hold firmly, 
then, before your minds what you were 
made for, not for pleasure, but for the 
complete development of your soul, — " in 
leading many of his children into glory," 
not merely bringing, but leading, — and 
that this development can come by suffer- 
ing, as the Captain of our salvation was 
fully developed through suffering. 



I 1 8 PERSONALITY \ 

With God there are no problems. We 
have no problems in the spiritual process, 
as we should have none in the physical. 
Rather, we simply stand with eager hearts 
and waiting eyes, watching the unfolding 
of the will of God. The true electrician 
finds no problem in electricity. He may 
be bewildered by the mystery by which he 
is surrounded; he may not understand how 
the message is transmitted along the wires, 
or what he calls the underground current ; 
he has nothing now to do with the solution 
of mystery, but simply to watch the de- 
velopment and manifestation of a physical 
process, and in proportion as he is true to 
his science, to this unfolding and develop- 
ment, so he becomes the true scientist and 
electrician. 

What would you think of the scientist 
trying to square a theory of three hundred 
years agt) with a theory of six hundred 
years ago, and then striving for a formula 
to make them fit ? The true scientist must 
have to do with the forces of nature to- 
day, noting their fulfillment and manifes- 
tation ; not wasting his time endeavoring 
to discover how his chariot is made, but 
simply " hitching his wagon to the stars." 



SUFFERING. 



II 9 



He has nothing to do with problems as 
such. So it is in the spiritual process. 
We must not turn our eyes backward to 
theological theories of some hundred or a 
thousand years ago, but simply note the 
outpouring of the spiritual life, of the will 
of God, and in that noting we shall make 
our spirits go the way of the will of God, 
and in making our souls thus a part of the 
will of God we shall enter into that full 
and complete development of the soul of 
which it is capable. 

Here lies a sufferer, bed-ridden for 
years, nerve-tortured, in racking pain, and 
he goes back in his despair to the theories 
of a thousand years ago and sees in this 
blessed universe two Gods, a God of evil 
and a God of love, contending one with 
another. The God of evil says : "Iara pun- 
ishing you for some transgression you com- 
mitted in the past ; " and the soul of this 
poor tortured sufferer raises its eye to this 
God and curses the day it was born, and 
would die ; God entirely shut out from his 
vision, he rests only in the absolute de- 
spair of suffering. Now, let us say to that 
bed-ridden sufferer, " God is a God of love." 
As he is the God of love, so is he also 



X 20 PERSONA LITY. 

the God of pity. As the mother's heart is 
torn in witnessing the sufferings of her 
child, suffering many times more keenly in 
her heart than the child can possibly suffer 
in its body, so God, who weeps when we 
weep, feels with us, as did Jesus in the 
story of the beloved Lazarus, suffers with 
us, pities us, cares for us to the end. 

There are certain laws in the physical 
process which God does not promise to 
stay. The child puts its finger in the fire. 
God is sorry for the pain of the burned 
hand, but he does not promise to stay the 
operation of this law. If we violate a law 
of the physical process, we must take the 
suffering. We thus see how knowledge 
comes only by experience, which is another 
way of saying that knowledge comes only 
by suffering. If we are to learn the laws 
of the physical process we must accept the 
suffering. Many a man must be stricken 
down by lightning before the laws of elec- 
tricity are discovered and the science made 
useful to man. 

It is along the line of broken laws that 
experience through pain and suffering 
brings knowledge. If knowledge is power, 
suffering is still greater power. The suf- 



SUFFERING. 121 

fering that men of science have experi- 
enced is the momentum given to the force 
and power which have enlarged the area 
of ascertained knowledge. It is the martyr 
flame that has become the quickening 
power of the spiritual growth and develop- 
ment of the soul. Everywhere suffering 
has given power, mightier than that of 
knowledge. Who was it that was able to 
write some of the Psalms ? David, the 
sinner, adulterer, murderer. Yet when 
the iron of remorse entered his soul, his 
sufferings became intense, and by that 
suffering, experience, and knowledge he 
comes to have his lips touched as with a 
burning and living coal snatched from the 
fire of the altar of God's love. So has it 
been with Paul, — ■misdirected power. For 
what is sin, sometimes, but the failure to 
hit the mark ? The bow is bent, the arrow 
is sped, but the mark is missed and suffer- 
ing follows. Saul bends the bow of his en- 
thusiasm, speeds the arrow of his persecut- 
ing venom, desiring to do God service, but 
misses the mark, and then the sufferings 
come. He is smitten to the earth with 
momentary blindness ; he is not acknow- 
ledged by God's people. Even the Chris- 



1 2 2 PERSONALITY. 

tians at Jerusalem will not recognize him ; 
but through all this knowledge, pain, and 
suffering he comes to be the loving Paul. 

If we may note the result of broken laws 
in pain, and that through pain knowledge 
comes, and even a greater power than 
knowledge, is it not reasonable, at least, 
to say that suffering seems to have a ne- 
cessary place in the development of the 
human soul ? The body suffers, but it is 
of comparatively little consequence what 
happens to the body ; it is ephemeral, it 
lasts but a day. It is better than the gar- 
ment it wears, but it is only the creature 
of an hour. The racking pain of the body, 
we may say, in many instances, is the re- 
sult of violated physical laws, but the spir- 
itual life is of the first consequence, and, 
as a matter of fact, it does grow along the 
lines and through the process of suffer- 
ing. 

It seems to me a perfectly fair ques- 
tion to ask, Was there ever any fully de- 
veloped soul who did not suffer intensely, 
and in that suffering develop the forces 
and talents within it, rising almost to the 
level of genius ? Have you never felt in 
the presence of some mighty spirit, born 



SUFFERING. 1 23 

with unusual powers, capable of accom- 
plishing mighty things, rising in the sub- 
limity of his forces to the transcendent 
heights of genius, yet never having been 
burned to the fibres of his soul by the 
consuming fire of pain and agony, — have 
you not felt in the presence of such a life 
that, when the supreme moment of Christ- 
like agony shall have come to him, he will 
burst the bonds binding him by reason of 
his limitations and through the fires of his 
suffering spring into hitherto unknown 
powers and capabilities ? Shall we dare 
to say that Lincoln could have been a 
Lincoln without his sufferings ? Dante a 
Dante without his ? Luther, Melancthon, 
Ridley, Cranmer, St. Augustine ? Oh, 
how the pain of sin entered St. Augus- 
tine's soul ; how the biting chisel of vio- 
lated law cut the fair beauty of holiness, 
engraved his character ! and through his 
Confessions we are enabled to see the pro- 
cess through which the angel of his spirit 
was let out. Dare we say that St. Augus- 
tine would have been what he was without 
all his sufferings ? 

May we not say, then, that it is a law, — 
understanding all the time that law is only 



1 24 PERSONALITY. 

the record we make of our observations of 
the manifestations and unfoldings of the 
will of God ; but with this understanding, 
may we not say that it is a law of the soul 
that character shall come along the line 
and through the process of suffering ? 
May we not also say that suffering devel- 
ops all the latent forces, and that if the 
greatest and the best came out in Jesus 
through suffering, so the greatest and best 
can come out in us along the same lines ? 
We shall not then lift up our faces to God 
and say, " Curse the day I was born," but, 
"Thou art my God, and I will trust thee; 
thou art my God, and I will love thee." 

Thus in the spiritual process the higher 
life is growing, developing, asserting itself, 
fulfilling its being, claiming in realization 
its destiny, and thus, through suffering, 
nothing can stay it, obstruct it, thwart it, 
defeat it. As soon grasp the chariot 
wheels of the sun, as stop the soul's ulti- 
mate development. 

"Is it true, O Christ in heaven, 
That the highest suffer most? 

That the strongest wander farthest, 
And most hopelessly are lost ? 

That the mark of rank in nature 
Is capacity for pain ? 



SUFFERING. 1 25 

And the anguish of the singer 

Makes the sweetness of the strain ? " 

Of course there is much suffering that 
we have it in our power to prevent. The 
animal life about us suffers ; shame to us 
that it is so. What a commentary on hu- 
man savagery it is that only by the power 
of an organized society for the prevention 
of cruelty to animals, backed by the con- 
stabulary force of the government, we may 
have our hand stayed from violence and 
cruelty to the dumb brutes that serve us 
so patiently ! It is only a step higher, 
"man's inhumanity to man," when we wit- 
ness the sorrow and suffering by which 
we are surrounded without lifting a finger 
to touch but the hem of sorrow, that vir- 
tue may go out from us to help and bless. 
But shall we blame God for that ? rather 
the demon of hate, cruelty, and selfishness 
that inspires our own hearts. 

But men may rise on stepping-stones 
of their dead selves to higher things, and 
you and I should use the experiences that 
come to us as ladders, by which we may 
ascend with blessing and praise into that 
realm of existence where we belong in kin- 
ship with* God. 



1 26 PERSONALITY. 

I wonder if I have said enough to have 
you take away with you this morning one 
or two simple truths. First, that you are 
made for glory, character, to become a 
fully developed soul. Nothing short of 
this can ever satisfy the demands of your 
being. There are certain spiritual laws 
that must be obeyed, and they are as ex- 
acting in their demands as physical laws. 
Here is a farmer with his mowing-machine. 
He understands that every cog must an- 
swer cog, every wheel fit into wheel, other- 
wise there will be grinding, waste, loss, de- 
struction. It is so with the soul. There are 
certain forces that must fit, — righteousness 
with love, patience with humility, pardon 
and forgiveness with courage and heroism, 
sanctification with holiness, — and those 
are vital forces of the soul and must an- 
swer, and fit in one with another. You are 
made for glory, and God is helping you on 
to glory, not to salvation only, except in so 
far as salvation is being saved from blun- 
der and from mistake. He is leading you 
to character, to the welfare of the soul, 
and that is his aim for your life, that it may 
be well with all the forces of your spiritual 
nature. 



SUFFERING. \2J 

Then I want you to see that he, who 
alone of all men has reached that glory, — 
the Man of Sorrows, treading the way of 
the cross, forsaken of friends, feeling that 
he was the cause of the spiritual loss of an- 
other, misrepresented, suffering every phy- 
sical pain and the still greater mental agony 
of a soul shut out from the presence of God, 
— that he only entered into that fullest 
realization of the soul when he could cry, 
"Thy will, not mine, be done." So that 
the soul at this moment is flooded, as it 
were, with the vision of the will of God, till 
the two wills become one ; and in that one- 
ness is the power of victory, the victory by 
which the soul enters into harmony with 
all the spiritual forces of the universe and 
is at one with God. I want you to see 
that as the Captain of your salvation leads 
that way, so you must go, and in going 
that way the latent forces of your soul may 
be developed ; that physical pain may be as 
nothing; and that mental anguish is only 
the consuming fire that shall inspire your 
soul to greater effort and draw out the 
spiritual forces that are within you. 

Oh, take new ideas of your possibilities, 
your destinies ; see in this great suffering 



I 2 8 PERSONALITY. 

of yours that you are bound more closely 
with others who suffer, that there is sym- 
pathy that goes out to them, that you have, 
because of your suffering, a power and 
force for the uplifting of your fellows only 
excelled by him who endured the cross and 
despised the shame that he might lead us, 
children of his Father, flesh of his flesh, 
bone of his bone, — lead his own brethren 
from glory unto glory, into the full reali- 
zation and development of their souls, 
through the pain, the suffering, the agony 
by which man creeps first to the foot of 
his cross, then to its summit, and there be- 
holds the lines of the cross melting away 
and taking on the shape of the throne of 
the soul, whereon sits forever the suffering 
God. At his right hand he reigns for ever 
and ever, the suffering Christ, whose love 
is continually brought to us by that same 
suffering Spirit, whose groanings and be- 
seechings never cease, as he seeks with 
tender pity to draw us to our hearts' true 
home in the bosom of the infinite God. 



VIII. 
JOB. 

The Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. 
Job xlii. 10. 

Newport^ ig July, i8gi. 



VIII. 

JOB. 

This is a wonderful drama, this drama 
of Job, — ■ archaic in form, ancient in char- 
acter; probably one of the most ancient 
pieces of literature. It is inspired,, because 
it tells the truth. It seems quite striking 
that so clear a grasp of truth should have 
come down to us from so early a date. 

In Cairo to-day you see the mummy of 
Rameses II., and you feel as if the 3300 
years since his death had been bridged 
over, and that you were gazing upon his 
face and taken back to the time when this 
drama is set. The scene is laid perhaps 
one hundred years before the time of Ra- 
meses II. We know to what an extent 
civilization had risen in Egypt, how great 
were the attainments of the Egyptians in 
poetry, in literature, and in the sciences. 
We are therefore ready to appreciate the 
scope of this drama ; and also are ready to 



1 3 2 PERSONALITY. 

see that religion had advanced only so far 
as a patriarchal type, domestic in form and 
spirit, with little ceremonial, and no sepa- 
rate priesthood. 

The Book of Job is a poem of the purest, 
most exalted type. There are graphic 
touches of human life in it. Let us see 
how it begins. 

Here is a rich Arabian of high rank, 
called Job, — a chieftain, a warrior, a judge, 
and of immense wealth ; one of the greatest 
men in the East. His wealth is enumer- 
ated in the poem. It speaks of his seven 
thousand sheep, three thousand camels, 
one thousand oxen, and so on. His home 
is near the great cities of the rivers Eu- 
phrates and Tigris, which he frequently 
visits. He is upon the main caravan route 
between the East and Egypt, and is in 
constant communication with the advanced 
Egyptian civilization. He has all that 
great prosperity can give him, and, as a 
happy and unusual combination, with this 
great wealth he has absolute integrity. 

I say integrity, because integrity is only 
another name for spirituality. The man 
who preserves his integrity preserves his 
spirituality. The man who manifests his 



JOB. 133 

life most truly is the most pious man. He 
may not know it himself. Many men are 
not aware of the greatness of their own 
souls, quite unaware, frequently, of the 
depth of the spirituality which is mani- 
festing itself through them constantly. We 
see this in the lives of great spirits. Such 
was St. Paul, such our Lord. 

Here in Job is this happy combination 
of wealth, spiritual attainment, and power, 
the respect of his fellow|, friends, and 
neighbors, and the happiest domestic life. 
This great man, with all that these favor- 
able external surroundings can give him, 
is also a man of great spirituality, of great 
integrity. 

That God may lead man from a great 
height of spiritual attainment to one still 
greater and far more sublime, he may lead 
him first down through deep, dark valleys, 
before he has the power to scale the 
greater heights to which God destines him. 
It is by this increase of his spiritual life, 
by this going down into these valleys of 
great soul- agony, that man is able to climb 
the dizzy heights, those sublime summits, 
to which God strives to lead him. Great 
spirits who have changed the current of 



1 34 PERSOXALITY. 

human life, and have left their impress 
upon their fellows, have come down from 
heights into the dark, deep valleys of great, 
heart-breaking grief, Christ himself passed 
down into the deep sorrows of Gethsem- 
ane's garden before he reached that sub- 
limest height on Calvary's cross-crowned 
top. It is by such experiences that the 
human soul stands side by side with God, 
and the human will becomes at one with 
the divine. It is God's way constantly 
with man, that through those dark valleys 
of sorrow and great trial he may lead him 
to the greater heights. Sometimes these 
experiences come to man in middle life. 
It was so with Moses. He was more than 
forty years old before he began to be led 
into the dark valley, and he w r as eighty 
before he began to assert the powers that 
were within him. 

It is in middle life that these experiences 
come to Job. God has great jewels, which 
he is holding in his hand ready to give to 
him. See in this a parable of the human 
experience of life. In his hand God is 
holding forth the great jewels of his own 
spiritual life, ready to impart them to 
man. But man can receive them only in 



Job. 135 

God's way. When God finds man strong 
enough to receive more of the divine, then 
he lets him go down into the valley of the 
shadow. So Job at seventy has swept 
from him, — not at a single blow, months 
probably elapse between each of the catas- 
trophes, — he has taken from him his 
wealth, his position, his home, his domes- 
tic happiness. Everything that man would 
hold dear is taken away. First comes the 
loss of his wealth, and that would stagger 
most men. Then his entire family is lost. 
Then comes a revolting disease, "elephan- 
tiasis." 

Months elapse before Job's friends in the 
far East get tidings of the calamities that 
have come to him, and they make reason- 
able haste to come to see him, and accord- 
ing to Eastern custom they scatter the 
dust over their heads and throw it toward 
heaven ; they tear their robes, expensive 
garments of silk, as expressions of their 
sympathy, and coming into Job's presence, 
they sit staring and gaping upon him for 
seven days in awful, painful silence. 

Seven days and nights without uttering 
a word, and finally Job himself breaks the 
silence. 



I36 PERSONALITY. 

" Remember," they say, " we have had a 
council in heaven between the Lord, the 
angels, and Satan." There is no irreverence 
here; and Satan receives his commission to 
subject Job to the most painful privations. 
There is an archaic simplicity in this 
great drama when Satan says to the Lord : 
" Doth this prosperous Job fear thee for 
naught ? " That is to say : " See how well 
his piety serves him. It brings him 
wealth, prosperity." The problem is pro- 
pounded : " Can there be righteousness 
apart from selfishness ? " 

Men sometimes think that goodness for 
its own sake has no foundation in human 
experience ; that " goodness is merely the 
best policy ; " but that is the Satanic view. 
In this drama we are shown that there is 
such a thing as goodness for its own sake ; 
and the more the human race realizes that 
there is such a thing in human conscious- 
ness and experience as goodness for its 
own sake, righteousness for its own value, 
piety for its own worth, the truer it comes 
to the normal life. 

The three pious romancers, not inten- 
tionally misrepresenting the truth, but dis- 
torting God's ways to make them square 



JOB. 137 

with their own peculiar views, — Eliphaz, 
with his profound dignity ; Bildad, with 
his wise saws, and Zophar, bigoted, violent, 
coarse, striving to measure all souls by the 
standard of a balance-sheet, — they know 
that suffering means some special sin. 

" Can it be that there is so much calamity 
without sin ? " We have sometimes, either 
looking at ourselves or at others, thought 
that, because this man or woman is expe- 
riencing great calamity, there must be 
some secret sin somewhere, some great 
violation of God's law. But Christ taught 
quite otherwise. " Who hath sinned, this 
man that is born blind, or his parents ? " 
Hear the answer : " Neither hath this man 
sinned, nor his parents : but that the works 
of God should be made manifest in him." 

Job's friends are confident that there 
must be something wrong as to his faith ; 
he must have denied the fundamental prin- 
ciples of religion. 

We are so ready to say, when a man or 
woman has suffered, that there is some- 
thing wrong with his religion. These men 
were only too eager to see the beam in 
Job's eye, to say with their vulgar, gross de- 
nunciation, " What you need is some such 



1 3 8 PERSONALITY. 

faith as we have ; " and Job, in that deli- 
cious sarcasm, replied : " Surely ye are 
the people, and wisdom must perish with 
you ! " 

Calamity is not caused by sin. It is the 
process through which the soul is passing, 
and sorrows are used as God's agencies, as 
the processes through which the soul may 
pass, the vehicles to convey the riches of 
God's life and love. 

Then follows the great controversy, and 
it wages with great spirit and vigor. Job 
insists upon his own integrity. Although 
perplexed by events to which he can find 
no clue, he insists upon his own substantial 
innocence. He knows he may have trans- 
gressed spiritual laws, but as to conscious 
sin, willful sin, deliberate hostility to God, 
he is innocent, and he insists upon his in- 
tegrity. He respects the righteousness 
that is within him. 

One of the first steps toward spiritual 
life is to respect the righteousness that is 
within you, because that righteousness is a 
part of God. How do you know God, save 
by the righteousness he has implanted 
within you ? You say : " I will conduct 
my business honestly, but I know nothing 



JOB. I39 

about religious matters. " Ah, but you do. 
By this very honesty that is within you, 
you are beginning to recognize God and to 
see who he is. How do we take hold of 
eternal life, save by knowing God through 
righteousness, that is, through Christ ? 
He is the righteous one, the Sun of Right- 
eousness. 

All through this drama Job maintains 
his own integrity. Men may scoff, laugh, 
and jeer at him, but it will not make him 
swerve from his position as to his con- 
scious innocence. So the drama moves 
on ; the controversy rages, yet Job all the 
while is getting more and more of God. 
Destruction of property has taken place ; 
disease has done its worst ; domestic joys 
have departed, wife and children gone ; ev- 
erything that man would ordinarily value 
has been taken away, but there stands Job, 
strong in the life of God, which no man can 
take from him ; nay, stronger in that which 
was of value, than at any previous time in 
the history of his soul-development. 

There never was a time when he was so 
gre&t, so strong, so real, as when he lies 
stricken to the earth, overcome by his great 
sorrows and afflictions, forsaken, rejected, 



140 PERSONALITY. 

alone. It is now that God is pouring out 
himself into the soul of Job. It is the na- 
ture of God to suffer, to pity, to love ; and 
to know God is to know him through suf- 
fering, through pity, and by love. 

In the closing scenes of the drama the 
question is raised as to the prosperity of 
the wicked. In the light of Christ's life 
we have reached a solution of this. But 
it startles us to find it reached thirty-five 
hundred years ago. It comes up again in 
the Psalms : " I have seen the wicked in 
great prosperity. " Men are asking the 
same question now: " How is it that the 
wicked prosper ? " The answer should 
be clear enough, and it is in this great 
dramatic poem. Clear enough ! There 
is no such thing as the prosperity of the 
wicked. 

The prosperity of a man's soul cannot 
be measured by terms of sheep, of camels, 
of oxen, of wealth, fame, reputation. You 
cannot measure .a man's prosperity in terms 
of being a chieftain, a warrior, a statesman, 
simply because man is made along other 
lines. He is made for other things. The 
happiness and prosperity of a child may be 
measured, when he is very young, by the 



JOB. 141 

number of pretty pebbles picked from the 
seashore and crammed into his little pock- 
ets, but when you begin to realize that the 
child is made for something more than 
that, then his prosperity ceases to be mea- 
sured by such terms. If we are to be mea- 
sured by wealth, by health, by fame, then, 
indeed, Job's prosperity was taken from 
him when all these things were stripped 
away ; but because a man's prosperity 
consists of that which is of the greatest 
value to him, of that which differentiates 
him from every other being in creation, 
his "manness," his integrity, then do you 
not see that to speak of the prosperity of 
the wicked is a contradiction in terms ? 
The wicked man is bristling with negative 
signs. That which is of value to a man 
is positive ; life, righteousness, honesty, 
holiness, are positive. Wickedness cannot 
be a positive thing, and to speak of the 
prosperity of the wicked is, I am sure, a 
contradiction in terms. I-say this for your 
encouragement and warning. If prosper- 
ity means wealth, riches, power, success, 
we are placing ourselves upon the level of 
the little child. That which is true pros- 
perity is that which is of the greatest value 



142 PERSONALITY. 

to man, which differentiates him from 
other beings, namely, his spirituality, his 
integrity, his manliness ; and the whole 
drama of Job serves to show this clearly, 
that a man's goodness can be retained even 
in a hell of surroundings. 

Now a great deal of false theology has 
been derived from this drama. If you will 
run through it, you will see dozens of 
phrases which are thus in common use, but 
they came from those three men who, at 
the close of the drama, were condemned 
by the Lord : " My wrath is kindled against 
thee and thy two friends." 

Then comes the close of the drama, and 
it is a beautiful ending: "And the Lord 
turned the captivity of Job, and also the 
Lord gave him twice as much as he had 
before. ,, It sounds like a child's tale now 
to hear about the fourteen thousand sheep, 
the six thousand camels, the two thousand 
oxen, and the one thousand she asses, — 
how everything is doubled ! His children, 
who had been taken away by death, have 
their places taken by ten more children, 
seven sons, three daughters (" and no wo- 
men found so fair"); and how the great- 
ness of Job is magnified ! But it is always 



JOB. I43 

so. God takes away that he may give, 
that is all. Look back over your own lives, 
or the lives of others, and see how true this 
is of God's dealing with human souls. 
Pick out from your acquaintances some of 
those spirits before whose righteousness 
you have had the opportunity to bow down, 
and see how, in the processes through 
which this great soul-development has been 
attained, there has been the giving by God 
of those jewels which he holds in his ten- 
der, loving hands. 

All God could give to Job through joy 
he had given him before his suffering, and 
now he sees him strong enough to take a 
greater measure of riches, and he leads 
him through the deep, dark valleys of sor- 
row and trial to the sublime heights of 
still greater achievement. It is fascinating 
and exhilarating to watch God's provi- 
dences, to see how there is the constant 
revelation of himself, the giving at every 
possible opportunity of himself, the leading 
of the child through tangle and thicket and 
rough paths, always that he may impart 
something more. 

When once you begin to realize what 
you are, begin to be at one with God, real- 



144 PERSONALITY. 

ize that you were created to have your will 
in absolute oneness with the Father's will, 
that you are destined to have your own 
place in the spiritual process, that you 
are an heir with Christ, then do you not 
see that you are ready, gladly ready, eagerly 
watchful, to seize every revelation of God, 
every outpouring of God, whether in joy or 
sorrow, ready to see that he is giving you 
double of himself? " And the Lord also 
gave Job twice as much as he had before. ,, 

" Grow old along with me ! 
The best is yet to be, 

The last of life, for which the first was made; 
Our times are in His hand 
Who saith, ' A whole I planned, 

Youth shows but half ; trust God : see all, nor be 
afraid I '" 

Oh, may you catch this impression, that 
God is striving to fill your hearts and lives 
and souls with himself ; that in this great 
drama you see how true it is to live through 
an onward, even movement, from lower to 
higher spiritual attainments. As spiritual 
beings you are made for the best, the high- 
est and greatest, and the Lord shall turn 
your captivity if you will but realize that 
you are spirits, that you are made for the 
best and highest, and that toward the best 



job. i 4S 

and highest he is leading you. May God 
hasten the day when, through sorrow, pain, 
or joy, you may receive a double portion 
of himself, and enter at last into oneness 
with him, oneness with Jesus, oneness with 
the Christ, — in all things like him, that we 
may live forever and not die. 



IX. 

ISAIAH. 

Lo, this hath touched thy lips. — Is. vi 7. 
26 July, i8gi. 



IX. 

ISAIAH. 

Behold, the fire of God hath done its 
perfect work, and there stands before us 
the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, Isa- 
iah. What hath God wrought ! A creature 
of clay touched with the fire of God, and 
behold, one of the grandest figures on the 
page of history. 

History never repeats itself. Man comes 
upon the stage unlike any of his predeces- 
sors, and no man follows him who is his 
like. So human experience never repeats 
itself. No man has passed through just 
such stages of development as Isaiah did. 
Isaiah, therefore, stands unique. His ex- 
periences, as yours, are unlike those which 
come into the life of any other man. 

We have had strange notions about 
such men as Moses and Isaiah. We have 
thought of them as men unlike ourselves, 
as demigods, not men having passions, 



1 50 PERSONALITY. 

thoughts, experiences, temptations, like 
ourselves ; not surrounded by conditions 
similar to ours. In this respect human 
nature is always more or less alike. I re- 
member in my boyhood days it was ex- 
ceedingly difficult to believe that men who 
lived fifty, five hundred, a thousand, or three 
thousand years before were men such as 
live to-day. To me it was inconceivable 
that they were men having thoughts, feel- 
ings, temptations, like ours ; men as we 
understand men. But all that has gone. 

Isaiah is a sagacious politician, a pro- 
found statesman ; a man bred in the city, 
always living in the capital ; of high so- 
cial rank, having access and great influ- 
ence at court, having such opportunities 
and power there that he can address, in 
very plain language, even the king. He 
is also a man of great literary skill and 
training. This is apparent from his writ- 
ings. Of keen perception of truth, a man 
whose soul is so set afire by God that 
his mental perceptions are set aglow ; so 
that he can see where other men are 
blind, hear where other men are deaf, re- 
spond where other men are indifferent to 
the great fundamental principles of eternal 
truth, 



ISAIAH. I 5 I 

Fancy with me eternal life as a circle, 
and Moses taking hold of his segment of 
the circle, Isaiah taking hold of his, and so 
with every great spirit, each one taking 
hold of his own particular segment of the 
cfrcle of everlasting truth, and you will get 
some conception of the opportunity that 
rests upon every human soul to declare it- 
self. Isaiah thus was himself. 

Isaiah is married, and his wife is kindled 
with the same enthusiasm, so much so that 
she is called a prophetess. What scope 
God gave to the powers of women in the 
development of Israel ! His two sons also 
are aroused to the same feeling, and they 
are to grasp their own segment of the circle 
of eternal truth. 

Nay, more than this. Isaiah draws about 
him a school of disciples, of followers, who 
also are fired with the same desire to grasp 
eternal truth. He founds a school of pro- 
phets. Hence he was not a man of in- 
significant position or influence. We must 
not think of him as a mere creature of cir- 
cumstance, but as a great personage ; a 
soul filled with the fire of righteousness 
and with an intense determination to dis- 
charge every function of his great being, 



1 5 2 PERSONALITY. 

so far as he understood them ; a man who 
had a vision of righteousness so set on fire 
with everlasting truth that his very soul 
was aglow with light from the holiness of 
God. He blazed God ! 

Note the political aspect of his day and 
generation. Judah is prosperous, silver and 
gold are in plenty, millionaires multiply, 
field is added to field, great estate to great 
estate, till the riches of the few are the 
cause of the suffering of the many, and the 
faces of the poor are ground, and yet their 
cry comes up to deaf ears. For there has 
been a failure to distinguish between 
righteousness as it affects the soul, and 
mere ceremonial righteousness, — that is 
to say, the one burden of Isaiah's message 
to his fellows as individuals and as con- 
stituting the state, speaking both as a 
preacher and as a statesman, — his one 
message is Holiness. But see how men 
had mistaken the conception of holiness, 
even as we also sometimes do. Holiness 
with them had been to a great extent cere- 
monial righteousness merely. As we say 
sometimes that when a man says his 
prayers, reads his Bible, becomes a church 
member, and conducts himself according 



ISAIAH. 153 

to the dictates of public opinion, all is well 
with him. Notice that in the Jewish mind 
there had been this idea of ceremonial 
righteousness ; that is to say, everything 
would go well if there were conformity to 
the requirements of the state. So it had 
come to pass as a current opinion that 
there might be holiness with gross im- 
morality ; that immorality affected not at 
all the question of holiness. The immorali- 
ties of Canaanitish worship in their in- 
fluence upon the Hebrews is a case in 
point. 

In the New Testament there is a clearer 
conception of sin and of holiness, but in 
Isaiah's day there was an incomplete no- 
tion of holiness and a false notion as to 
sin. A wrong act would put you in the 
power of one who would make you rue it ; 
if you violated a certain political require- 
ment or ceremonial enactment, that was a 
sin, because it placed you in the power of 
one who could make you suffer the punish- 
ment. Just as now men sometimes think 
that the heinousness of their sin is mea- 
sured by the probabilities of their being 
detected, Notice Isaiah's preaching of 
righteousness, of holiness, as the first of 



I 5 4 PERSONALITY. 

spiritual realities ; that sin is that which 
injures the soul, a negative expression of 
the soul's life, and it matters not whether 
it be known or not. That is not the ques- 
tion. It matters not whether the soul be 
detected in a violation of spiritual holi- 
ness. Of course it is wrong to commit 
sin, because it hurts your brother. No 
man can live to himself, no man can die 
to himself, so no man can sin to himself. 
We never can separate ourselves in our 
influence from others. The thrill of that 
violation is felt in its vibration and touches 
some other life. It is the pebble dropped 
into the sea of human experience, whose 
waves touch to the farthest shore in its 
effect. That is always and entirely true, 
but the evil of sin is not so much in its 
hurtfulness to other lives, as in that it 
hurts man's own integrity. Sin is the jar 
given to the exquisite sensitiveness of per- 
sonal holiness. 

Isaiah's ideas had to expand somewhat, 
I think, in the beginning of that forty 
years of his ministry. He begins his pro- 
phetic career before 734 b. c, and it ex- 
tends beyond 701 b. c, probably forty 
years at least, possibly even longer, from 



ISAIAH. I 5 5 

his youthful enthusiasm on to the mature 
determination of his advanced life. With 
him there is a growth and an appreciation 
of the nature of spiritual holiness. At 
first he had felt that if Judah as a nation 
could have absolute integrity and righteous- 
ness, if it could have conformity to the en- 
actments of the law, that thus Israel should 
be saved. It is not till later on that he 
seizes with a fuller grasp the truth that, 
even if Judah as a nation were stricken to 
the earth, her great wealth taken from her, 
prostrated and trodden under foot, — even 
amid all this woe, yet integrity, holiness, 
righteousness, might prevail. Jeremiah saw 
this more clearly one hundred years later ; 
and in the times of our Lord, then indeed 
we see a clearer vision of what integrity, 
holiness, and righteousness are. But we 
in these days see, or should see, that as a 
fundamental spiritual reality, absolutely 
essential to the soul's growth, righteous- 
ness, apart from any consideration from 
without, is a requisite of the soul's life. 

Sometimes we think we are to be saved 
from without. We say, "We are citizens 
of Judah, or Hebrews of the Hebrews, or 
members of the church, Christians, or 



I 5 6 PERSONALITY. 

Americans, and, for example, as goes the 
State, so we also shall go ; as goes the 
Church, so we also shall go." Some even 
have felt that their family shall save them. 
" We have never done anything that has 
been detected, committed no overt trans- 
gression ; " all the time ignoring the neces- 
sity of spiritual soul-righteousness, ignor- 
ing the absolute necessity that spirituality 
shall be synonymous with holiness, and 
that righteousness shall mean the soul's 
integrity ; failing to recognize the fact that 
holiness (righteousness) is none other than 
being at one with God, and that salvation 
means nothing less than a man taking hold 
of his own portion of eternal truth — of the 
eternal God. 

Then, as ever, there was a division of the 
world's life, where religion on the one hand 
was a worship of national prosperity, po- 
litical alliances, as who should say : " If 
only we could have land enough, capital 
enough, and millionaires enough, a suffi- 
ciently advanced civilization, public libra- 
ries, electric railways, public schools and 
colleges, institutions of learning, art gal- 
leries, everything that means material pros- 
perity, — if only we could have prosperity 



ISAIAH. 157 

enough, we should have the salvation of 
the whole race, the holiness of mankind. 
If only we could have wealth enough, if 
only we could have that highest condi- 
tion of altruism, one living for another, 
it would land man upon a plane of such 
exalted being that it would be righteous- 
ness, salvation indeed. All hail to the sal- 
vation of the race ! ,; That was what the 
Hebrews thought, If only they could have 
a sufficiently beautiful temple, land joined 
to land, field to field, estate to estate, riches 
enough, material prosperity enough, form 
satisfactory alliances with neighboring na- 
tions, why, then there would be success, 
salvation that would be righteousness, holi- 
ness to the nation ; the very bells on the 
horses should ring it out. 

The other division is of those who wor- 
ship holiness, the Holy One of Israel, spirit- 
ually, apart, and in spite of any material 
condition ; who strive to express their 
souls, even though they may be oppressed 
with the great temptations of riches ; who 
carry cheerfully, if need be, the great cross 
of fame, reputation, and success, even if 
they are compelled to stand upon the very 
apex of the pinnacle of worldly honor and 



1 5 8 PERSONALITY, 

glory, where men have placed them, yet 
stand there in the strength which God sup- 
plies ; or who, though stricken to earth by 
affliction, sorrow, or pinching want, beaten 
down, tempest torn, yet live, as such 
souls may, as did Paul, and count it joy 
thus to be crucified with Christ, because 
they have the life of God within them ; 
because it is as true of them as of Isaiah, 
"one of the seraphim has come to him, 
with a live coal in his hand, taken from off 
the altar, and has placed it on his mouth 
and said, ' Lo, this hath touched thy lips/ " 

Thus mankind ever has been divided into 
these two classes, the one whose religion is 
material prosperity, the other whose religion 
is spirituality, that is, the expression of the 
soul in the life of God, whence it springs, 
to whom it belongs, whither it is going. 

I think you would be interested to have 
it brought to your mind that the prophecies 
of Isaiah are collections of his writings 
through the long years of his preaching. 
He had preached orally, and had made a 
careful arrangement of his prophecies, and 
committed them to writing. His disciples, 
or followers, had aided him in this work, 
and many of these prophecies as they are 



ISAIAH. 159 

bound up here in this book are, therefore, 
not in chronological order, because, per- 
haps, they did not take their present fixed 
form until two hundred and fifty years 
after Isaiah had committed them to writ- 
ing. You can see, then, how this would 
account for some disarrangement as to 
dates. Go back now two hundred and 
fifty years and edit documents written 
then, and you would see how difficult it 
would be to give them just the order they 
might naturally assume. You will also be 
interested to note that many of these writ- 
ings were placarded in public places where 
men could read them. Reading and writ- 
ing by this time had become a common 
accomplishment ; it was the custom to 
place these prophecies, these sermons, ex- 
hortations, warnings, in public places, that 
people might read them, and that thus the 
influence of Isaiah might be extended, so 
that thousands beyond his immediate hear- 
ers might know of the deep things that 
were stirring his heart. You have also 
seen how Isaiah drew about him disciples ; 
they also would extend his words by com- 
mitting them to writing. 

Beside being a statesman, Isaiah was a 



160 PERSONALITY. 

national reformer, and he gives himself in 
entire consecration to the cause of bring- 
ing spirituality into the Hebrew national 
life. He is also the one who delineates 
for the first time a concrete example of spir- 
ituality. He preaches it with life-giving 
power. Lineament upon lineament, as an 
engraver with his tools traces line upon 
line, so at length there stands out in con- 
crete form the great beauty of holiness, the 
strength, the suffering, the gentleness, the 
purity, the simplicity of that divine figure 
which, having seen once, and once only, we 
hold as dear as life. This divine figure 
expresses itself forever upon the annals of 
human history. Thus it is Isaiah who 
first gives us the Christ, the personal Mes- 
siah, the embodiment in concrete form of 
spirituality, and who establishes in this 
Messiah the fellowship of righteousness. 

It is in Isaiah's mind that there is the 
birth of that first conception of a church 
in its richer and larger significance, where 
there is first recognized the advantage and 
the necessity of fellowship, of drawing to- 
gether spiritualities, personalities, human 
souls, that they may help one another, build 
themselves into the temple not made with 



ISAIAH. l6l 

hands, and thus perpetuate the life of God 
among men ; or, in other words, we find 
that larger, completer view of the oneness 
and the brotherhood of the human race. 
Up to this time there was the feeling, like 
lurking poison, that their brethren were 
foreigners, barbarians. It is a poison 
which pervades our present day civilization 
to a great extent, — regarding men of yel- 
low skin or of dark skin not as brothers, 
but as aliens, not of the one family of God. 
It is that same disease which makes men 
refuse to recognize the brotherhood of 
mankind. Isaiah beholds the true vision 
of the oneness of the brotherhood of man- 
kind, and in that oneness alone is the hu- 
man race to accomplish all the grandeur 
for which it is called into being. Often 
you and I feel that this oneness is some- 
thing to be admired, at least in theory, yet 
we fail to come into full apprehension of 
the necessity of the existence of this one- 
ness, the necessity of this brotherhood of 
the human race. We do not seem to un- 
derstand even to-day that when the faces of 
the poor are being ground, then the king- 
dom of God is being thwarted. The wheels 
of the chariot of progress "drave heavily " 



1 62 PERSONALITY, 

under such conditions ; yet we are holding 
back the great chariot of the onward move- 
ment of the divine purpose when we suffer 
one member of the human race to be out- 
raged, his rights withheld, or himself made 
a slave. Whenever we are oppressing the 
poor, adding field to field, estate to estate, 
piling up fortunes at the cost of the suffer- 
ing of any brother, we are ignoring that 
fundamental principle of the spirituality, 
the brotherhood, of the human race, and 
rolling back by centuries with a single 
movement of the arm the onward move- 
ment of the coming of the great civiliza- 
tion, the divine citizenship, the kingdom of 
God on earth. 

Isaiah emphasizes personal holiness, por- 
trays the features, the divine holiness of 
the coming Messiah, binds all kindred 
spiritual souls into the oneness of an or- 
ganic fellowship, which shall continue be- 
yond the gates of death, beyond any of 
those disintegrating forces which have 
pulled down thrones and shaken the foun- 
dations of the nations of the earth. This 
conception of the oneness of fellowship 
is the outcome of the inspiration of that 
divine vision where one of the seraphim, 



ISAIAH. 163 

with a live coal snatched from off the altar, 
touched Isaiah's lips. 

He has unconquerable faith in God. 
With Isaiah man's extremity is God's op- 
portunity. His faith is in the living God 
as a consuming fire ; he believes in the 
efficacy of the divine love which as a living 
coal burns the soul, purifying, illuminat- 
ing, making clear the faculties and all the 
powers of man's spiritual life. Though the 
people of God be led into captivity, though 
riches be exchanged for great poverty and 
distress, yet through all this pruning there 
is the hand of a loving life, which is cutting 
back the branches, even the vine itself, 
that it may bear fruit and bear it more 
abundantly. 

This is Isaiah's vital faith which makes 
it possible to see in the face of all adverse 
conditions that even though the life be cut 
back, yet it is done by the loving hand of 
God, and that the branch is being pruned, 
not mercilessly, not without pity, not arbi- 
trarily, but because the great heart of God 
sees in the vine and in the branch greater 
possibilities. " I am the vine, ye are the 
branches," and " I am come that ye may 
have life more abundantly." 



1 64 PERSONALITY. 

Oh, ye uncertain ones, catch Isaiah's 
faith ; oh, ye weeping ones, see his vision ; 
and let us all strive after that spirituality, 
that holiness ; let us each strive to behold 
the King in his beauty, that personal 
Christ, that Jesus, that Friend of friends, 
that we may live in him as did St. Paul ; 
and then let us see in our fellow-men bro- 
thers whose life we would not hurt, but 
build up ; let our greatest happiness be to 
minister unto others, even as the Son of 
Man went about, not being ministered unto, 
but ministering. In that oneness of the 
brotherhood, let us see with faith the lov- 
ing hand of God leading us, even though 
it be into captivity, away from friends and 
home, into the desert, exiled, where we, by 
the waters of Babylon, weep and cannot 
sing the songs of Zion ; but where even 
the wilderness of our captivity shall yet 
blossom as the rose, where, even in appar- 
ent separation, behold, we find ourselves 
nearer to God. 

There is no such nearness to God as 
when through all processes of joy or pain 
we come into the presence of him whose 
hands bear the nail prints, whose brow 
bears thorns as its crown, whose throne is 
side by side with eternal love. 



ISAIAH. 165 

Oh, cheerfully, gladly, then, watch the 
unfolding of his will ; if it be by suffering, 
hail it joyously; if it be through joy and 
prosperity, hold fast to the loving arms 
of his righteousness. Wherever he leads, 
through riches, with their great tempta- 
tions, by crags and mountain peaks, still 
hold fast to him. Isaiah's faith shall be 
yours, you shall find yourself at last at 
one with God's will. A joy which no man 
can take from you shall illumine your vi- 
sion, as the living coal gives light and glow 
to the human lip which has been touched 
by one of the seraphim who wing their 
flight from the throne of infinite life and 
love. 



X. 

ST. JOHN. 

John surnamed Boanerges, which is, the Son of Thun- 
der. — St. Mark Hi. 17. 

4 October, i8gi. 



X. 

ST. JOHN. 

The ideal life of man, the ideal that you 
would paint, not from the realization in 
your own life, but from the picture that you 
have drawn in your own mind, would be 
that of one who has gentleness, with 
strength ; calmness, firmness, with zeal ; 
who has love that lays hold of the very 
fibres of his life and expresses itself in pity, 
consideration, fortitude, and patient endur- 
ance. The rich man, then, is the man of 
such character, the man who has acquired, 
in expressing his acquisitiveness, such a 
mastery over the functions of his soul as 
to express the highest, the truest, the best 
that there is in him. 

Oh, the richness of such a life ! It is 
the richness of poverty, the richness of 
having poured out all the selfishness that 
there is in the soul, and permitting to flow 
in the selflessness of a great life. I honor 



I /O PERSOA r AL/TY. 

this thirst for such wealth, this desire for 
such true riches ; I honor this zeal, this 
acquisitiveness, only I must see all centred 
on that which is worthy of a man. The 
wealth of a great soul, the riches of vast 
acquisitions of life, all this expression of 
acquisitiveness, is altogether most desir- 
able. The rich man ! Oh, let us see him ; 
let us look upon him ; for he shall be to us 
the ideal man, of such great wealth that he 
has swept into his own life the great riches 
of human character which God has poured 
down upon him so abundantly. Acquisi- 
tiveness, then, has done her best work, 
reaped great soul-wealth and riches, and 
made the ideal man both possible and 
actual. I make this sketch because I want 
men and women to take just views of their 
possibilities, to see that when they have 
gathered to themselves only such things as 
men call riches and wealth, they have gath- 
ered that which is altogether beneath their 
dignity, beneath their just and rightful 
consideration. 

John stands before my mind as one pos- 
sessed of great riches. Painters have loved 
to portray his features as those of a young 
man. Perpetual youth seems to mark his 



ST. JOHN. 171 

life, whether we see it in childhood, as on 
the shores of Galilee he picks up pebbles 
or helps his father mend his nets ; or as a 
little boy of thirteen going to Jerusalem 
with his clear, bright, merry face, to attend 
the three periodical festivals of the holy 
city ; or, later on, listening to the stirring 
preaching of John the Baptist; or, still 
later, with the calm, steadfast power of 
youth, receiving the terrible news of the 
death of his own brother James by the 
cruel despot, Herod ; or, again, as he stands 
upon the Mount of Transfiguration, the 
chosen companion of the Jesus whom he 
loves ; or in the Garden of Gethsemane, 
with his youthful strength giving courage 
and support to his Lord ; or in the full 
and developed powers of his manhood, as 
he stands beneath the cross to receive the 
last gift from his Master, the care of the 
Blessed Virgin ; or, finally, as with aged 
and trembling hands, when he has filled 
his full portion of a long life, the century 
of his existence having run its course, he 
writes the Revelation on the isle of Patmos, 
— still the painter loves to give him through 
all these stages of his career the features 
of youth, perpetual youth. 



172 PERSONALITY. 

I sympathize with this feeling of the ar- 
tist. Of course it is not true to life, yet it 
is true to the idealized life that the man 
who is rich, wealthy, great, knows nothing 
of beginnings of life and length of days, 
but has within him the fountain of perpet- 
ual life, of perennial youth; not effeminate 
grace, but grace and gentleness, even 
though accompanied by the zeal, impetuos- 
ity, nay, vehemence, of this son of thunder. 

While St. John was the son of thunder 
in his youth, many have felt that in his 
later life his character in this regard was 
greatly changed. But son of thunder he 
was from the.beginning, when he demanded 
great things of God, took hold of great 
segments of the circles of everlasting truth, 
even calling down fire from heaven. What 
a relation to the universe to make such 
colossal demands ! That same character- 
istic follows him to the very last. His is a 
burning zeal for the acquisition of truth, 
an untiring loyalty striving to express the 
wealth of the life that is within him, so 
that he is ever the son of thunder, never 
losing this characteristic, only deepening, 
intensifying it into the larger life which 
becomes his as the years go on. I love to 



ST JOHA r . 173 

think of him as with gentleness, meekness, 
calm dignity ; as the one who knows how 
so to love that that faculty of his soul has 
seized the very fibres of his being, and has 
become that upon which he rests his friend- 
ship, his devotion to the Lord to whom he 
has chosen to give himself, that foundation 
upon which he rests the fellowship and 
brotherhood of mankind. I love not only 
to think of St. John with his perpetual 
youth, but also with that strength and dig- 
nity which go to make up the rich, the 
wealthy, the great, and the noble. 

St. John stands to me quite in the light 
of an ideal life, — one who has derived 
his life from the great source of all life, 
God; who has realized within himself the 
love that is born of God, the strength 
which great souls can have, and yet a 
strength of which they are scarcely con- 
scious. For what great soul has ever 
known his own greatness ? What rich 
spirit, possessed of great abundance of soul- 
wealth, has ever realized that he was more 
than a little child ? You find illustrations 
of this everywhere. In the kingdom of 
science man first enters as a little child. 
Indeed there can be no door in any great 



174 PERSONALITY. 

kingdom of soul-life which a child may not 
open, and thus enter into the greatness 
and richness and wealth in store for him. 

I note, then, these characteristics of St. 
John, richness of soul and discernment of 
truth. Painters have loved to depict him 
as the one of such keenness of perception 
that he may soar aloft as an eagle, and, with 
undimmed, unfilmed eye look full upon the 
sun in its glory. It is the same St. John 
who has had the open eye, the quick per- 
ception to look full on the Sun of Right- 
eousness, into the face of Jesus, and to 
see there truths, greatness of life, which 
others have not been quick to discern : to 
see there the highest expression of the soul 
of God. This same gentle St. John, nay, 
this son of thunder, becomes by the very 
keenness of this perception the profound 
philosopher, who sees that in the beginning 
was the Word, the Logos ; before all time, 
this Word was, and the Word was with God, 
and the Word was God. The same was in 
the beginning with God ; and the Word was 
made manifest in the flesh, the Word was 
made flesh and dwelt among us, and we 
beheld his glory. St. John beheld with 
open eye his glory, full of grace and truth. 



ST. JOHN. 175 

Who so well tells the mystery of the 
incarnation, its simplicity, sublimity, and 
grandeur ? 

Here is the basis of his philosophy, the 
eternal Word made flesh, the Word of God 
become man, nay, recognized as God be- 
cause of his perfect manhood, manness. 
For who shall see God save through man, 
understand God save through the human 
life that speaks of God ? If we are to know 
Jesus as the Son of God, we are to know 
him as the Son of man, through the fullness 
of his life, through its richness, through its 
perfection, and, seeing all this as the Son 
of man, we see in him the Word made 
flesh, the Son of God. We are to learn, 
then, that " he that loveth not the bro- 
ther, whom he hath seen, cannot love God, 
whom he hath not seen." Thus we under- 
stand that when we love our brethren, 
whom we see (as in loving Jesus, whom 
also we see), we are loving God. It is the 
very basis of Christian fellowship, the truth 
upon which life, immortal, eternal life, the 
life of God, rests. Thus his eagle eye 
discerns this vital truth, and sees this life 
of Jesus as the salvation of human souls. 
It takes away sin, because it enters into 



1 76 PERSONALITY. 

the soul as a life-giving force, producing 
health, and crowding out evil and soul-dis- 
ease. 

Although St. John represents Jesus as 
the propitiation for our sins, yet he takes 
hold of the deeper and more profound 
truth that propitiation means mercy. Je- 
sus is the mercy for our sins ; mercy is 
applied forgiveness. Forgiveness is the 
giving for, — the giving of life for death, 
wholeness for sickness, wealth for poverty, 
riches for great want. Thus Jesus is the 
"mercy" for our sins, taking the richness, 
the health, the wealth of God into our 
souls ; he becomes the propitiation for our 
sins, not ceremonially, but vitally, actually, 
the applied forgiveness for our sins ; and 
thus becomes our life. Hence the neces- 
sity of forgiveness in the life of every in- 
dividual, for as Christ is, so is every man 
born to be. We are all possible Christs in 
•this sense, all possible mercies for sins, so 
that every man must learn this primal les- 
son, this fundamental truth, this essential 
function of the life of the soul, — forgive- 
ness, He who will not forgive, who has 
not learned to forgive, has burned the 
bridge over which he himself must one 



ST JOHN. 177 

day pass, because over the bridge of for- 
giveness, sooner or later, every soul must 
go. Forgiveness is the applied mercy of 
love, the expression of the life of God, and 
the expression of the deepest spiritual life 
of man ; not a weak sentiment, not a lax 
holding of truth, but a firm, strong laying 
hold upon the deepest truth of the soul, 
namely, this love which brings the soul 
into close and vital contact with God and 
makes a man so divine that he can rise 
above the fogs and mists which blind his 
discernment and judgment. This forgive- 
ness makes a man so divine as to be able 
to apply mercy, forgiveness, to every soul 
that may have wronged him, and by this 
application of forgiveness he becomes, like 
God, a life-giver, a life-bestower, an out- 
pourer of life, and the more life he pours 
out, the more he has to give, for God lives 
by giving and by forgiving. 

See St. John's zeal for the acquisition of 
truth. When you wish to make your boy 
desire riches, you show him a bit of gold, 
or a precious stone, or some other mate- 
rial form of riches, in order that you may 
arouse in his heart a desire for acquisition. 
I wonder we do not resort to the same 



1 78 PERSONALITY. 

method in holding before child-souls the 
riches of the Sun of Righteousness. Why 
do we go through life so blind to truth, 
with so little desire for its acquisition, that 
a ruby, red with the fire of God, we value 
no more than a bit of broken glass ? 

It is told of a great picture belonging 
here in Massachusetts, that, when it was 
exposed for sale, one who was known to 
be able to value such a work of art was 
requested to visit it with the thought of 
purchase. After sitting before it for per- 
haps an hour, he went away. " Have you 
seen the picture ? " he was asked. " Have 
you seen it ? Are you sure you have seen 
it ? " He went back and looked again. 
For the first time he saw it, and when he 
saw it he was aware of its great beauty 
and value and made the purchase. Yet we 
look upon the " pearl of great price," the 
life of Jesus in our souls ; gaze upon it 
but walk away ; we have no desire to be- 
come rich in its possession ; we are not 
fired with the zeal to call it down from 
heaven, making a colossal demand for this 
greatness of life, richness of soul, this great 
wealth of spirituality as brought to us in 
this Son of God. If we could but discern 



ST. JOHN. 179 

its value, we should buy it at whatever cost. 
St. John gives his whole life to buying the 
life of Jesus, because it is the life of God, 
of strength, of vitality, the life of great- 
ness, richness, wealth, spirituality. 

When a Darwin begins to discern the 
truth, he ceases not in his toil, day after 
day, year after year, burning with the de- 
sire for its acquisition. So it is with the 
scientific spirit, the musical spirit, the ar- 
tistic spirit. When once what is of value 
is discerned, then the soul becomes a son 
of thunder, a Boanerges, and devotes all its 
vehemence and impetuosity, all the forces 
of its nature, to its acquisition. But we 
are indolent, idle, palsied, and have not the 
courage to stop and pick up the jewel, so 
full of sunlight that it seems to tell of the 
great white throne of God. 

The richness of individual life is the 
greatest gift of God to man, and the great- 
est gift of man to man also. The richest 
gift that Jesus could give to St. John was 
himself. St. John lies on the bosom of 
Christ, and Christ loves him because of 
this keen discernment of truth, loves him 
for his zeal, for his devotion, for his great 
desire to become rich, for his unswerving 



1 80 PERSONALITY. 

zeal in expressing the richness he has re- 
ceived. He has received the gift of Jesus, 
the very best gift Jesus could give of him- 
self, and in receiving this gift he expresses 
it to the utmost. So in his old age he 
goes about saying to every one he meets, 
" Little children, love one another." It 
is not the babbling of decrepit old age, 
but the utterance of a soul who knew what 
love meant, a striving to express the gift 
imparted to him, an effort to make himself 
a continuation of the life of his Lord and 
Master. It is the richness of great gener- 
osity, the lavish outpouring of what one 
has received. We see the beginnings of 
such a spirit as this when, sometimes, a 
man of wealth seeks to give to his town a 
free library, or a hospital, or makes other 
provision for the convenience of the gen- 
eral public. This desire to express the 
richness which has come into the life is one 
of the noblest traits in human nature. Yet 
how are you and I striving to express any 
richness which has come into our lives, — 
how striving to pour out from the vast store- 
houses of our souls the spirituality which 
God has showered so abundantly into their 
deepest recesses ? 



ST JOHN. i8l 

I know not what you will do with this 
life of our Lord to-day, but I know the day 
will come, — it may not come now, nor to- 
morrow, this year or next, — but I know 
the day will come when, with St. John, you 
will be able to write a cipher across the 
lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and 
the pride of life ; when, taking those things 
up which the world calls riches, fame, and 
glory, all that can gratify the sense of liv- 
ing or pride of being, all that men would 
value as to be desired or acquired, you shall 
write a positive mark of falseness across 
them, realize their worthlessness, realize 
the richness of Christ, and take up this 
ruby so filled with the fire of God as to 
make you feel that the very vitality of God 
is struggling within it ; take up this life of 
Jesus and follow it. That day must come. 
Pray God it may come quickly, when you 
can say in the words of St. John, "Come, 
Lord Jesus, come quickly." For when he 
comes, oh, how rich you are ; what acquisi- 
tions are yours ; how you rise above the 
marshes and swamps, the tangle, the under- 
growth, the valleys ; how you creep up the 
hillsides ; how you reach the mountain 
tops ; how on eagle's wings you soar above 



1 8 2 PERSONALITY. 

the clouds, and reach the sun in its full 
glory, and with clear, open eye behold the 
king in his beauty of holiness ! Yes, you 
behold the king in his beauty, and in the 
vision you become rich, great, strong, — a 
son of thunder, a disciple whom Jesus 
loves. You become in a very large and 
real sense a son of God and a joint heir 
with Christ 



XI. 

THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 

I am the good shepherd. — St. John x. i i. 

i2 April, i8gi. 



XL 

THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 

This is a beautiful parable of the Good 
Shepherd. There is an exquisite tender- 
ness in it. It has the delicacy of truth. 
There is something in the nature of truth 
so exquisite and so delicate as to transcend 
any possible analysis. It comes to us with 
the force of truth, and we recognize it as 
such. It escapes and eludes us when we 
attempt to subject it either to dissection 
or to analysis. I listen to music, and I may 
not say that thus and thus are the waves 
of sound piled one upon another. There 
is this same exquisite delicacy about it 
that eludes me, yet I feel its truth. I am 
led captive by its sway ; my soul is brought 
into a state of rejoicing. Lo, there stands 
before me a character of great beauty, sub- 
limity, profundity, — all those elements 
which go to constitute greatness, a char- 
acter w r hich thus becomes admirable. I 



1 86 PERSONALITY. 

may not succeed altogether in analyzing the 
nature of this character and be able to say 
that this went to make up his courage, that 
his bravery, this his large-mindedness, and 
so on, but standing before me he com- 
mends the truthfulness of his nature to 
mine, and I accept it. 

It has seemed to me that the more we 
strive after a comprehension and an ap- 
prehension of truth, the more we find our- 
selves in the difficulty of inability to sub- 
ject it to analysis, and are able simply to 
throw wide the portals of the soul that it 
may in its experience receive the truth. 
We may say of a certain production of art 
that up to a given point it commends itself 
to our mind and we receive it with a de- 
gree of joy and gladness, but beyond that 
point it seems to elude analysis. In art, 
therefore, it is measurably true that analy- 
sis is impracticable, while in the most 
transcendent phases of truth it seems to 
be altogether impossible. Truth therefore 
comes to us without our ability to analyze 
its component parts ; it simply commends 
itself to us as such. I stand now before 
the sublime character of him who calls 
himself "the Good Shepherd." In this par- 



7 HE GOOD SHEPHERD. 187 

able there is that delicacy of touch, that 
exquisite tenderness, which make me feel 
that, beyond question, he is the Good 
Shepherd. 

Let us see, if we may, what it is that is 
promised in our text. 

The good shepherd is the shepherd who 
cares more for his sheep than for himself ; 
becomes attached to these helpless ani- 
mals ; cares more for their safety than for 
his own ; else, in the hour of danger, or im- 
minent peril, when, possibly, he might lose 
his own life, he would flee, and make good 
his own personal safety, and thus prove 
himself not to be a shepherd. The good 
shepherd, then, cares more for the welfare 
of these helpless brutes in his charge than 
for his own safety. He also is to see that 
they have what they need, not what they 
think they need, for the wisdom of sheep 
is not preeminent. We speak of sheep as 
following example, and as not able to select 
what is really good for them. But the good 
shepherd will see that they have what they 
most need. He will see that they have 
the clear sparkling waters, the green fields, 
protection from the storm, safe pathways 
over the rocks, through the narrow passes, 



1 8 8 PERSONA LITY. 

through the tangled thicket ; that they 
shall be conducted safely to the pasturage 
and return safely to the fold. They shall 
have provided for them what is most ne- 
cessary to their best welfare. 

All we, like sheep, have gone astray. 
Is it so ? Are we able to provide for our- 
selves that which we most need ? Have 
we sufficient wisdom, far-sightedness, abil- 
ity to take all circumstances so into con- 
sideration as to be able to determine what 
we most need, what is best for us ? Ex- 
periencing this inability to always deter- 
mine what is best for us, we instinctively 
turn to others for an example to imitate. 

The boy looks up to the swinging gait 
of the man as he walks along thestreet 
and almost catches his swagger. It is the 
same old story, this inability to determine 
what is best for us, this desire to look up 
to and imitate some one, to take some one 
for our leader. Sometimes we take a 
hireling who cares not for us, and we imi- 
tate him. The danger comes, and the 
hireling fleeth, — because he is a hireling. 
Sometimes that hireling is our own self- 
will. We say, " I will find for myself the 
quiet waters and green pastures. I know 



THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 189 

these mountain fastnesses ; I understand 
these intricate paths ; I think I can thread 
my way through the tangled thicket ; I 
know the world pretty well ; I can take 
care of myself," till a lacerated, pinched, 
starved soul staggers back from dry tor- 
rent bed and barren mountain side, — back 
to the fold for shelter and gentle care, — 
learning late the outcome of his self-will, 
the result of determining in his own limited 
wisdom what is best for him. 

I would not say this if I did not believe 
that you were made for the very best, that 
the possibility is in you of the very best ; if 
I did not believe that you had a right to have 
the very best shepherd that can possibly be 
given to you ; if I did not know that, as you 
sit before me to-night, there is within you 
such priceless value by reason of the possi- 
bilities that lie there, that you ought to have 
the very best of leaders, the very best of 
shepherds. It is not best for you that you 
should spiritually starve. It is not best 
that you should be lost on the mountain 
tops, that you should be alone, and hungry 
spiritually. It is not best that this poor 
lost wandering lamb in the mountain pas- 
tures should have his young coat, which 



I90 PERSONALITY. 

should be luxuriant and rich, rough,, poor, 
and worthless, Nor is it best for you that 
you should be without the richest spiritual 
pastures, the purest, most sparkling, clearest 
waters, the best of shepherds, the only one 
worthy of you, — he who calls himself the 
Good Shepherd. 

You are cheating yourself each time you 
take a hireling to be your leader. Why 
may we not believe this? Why not put 
away all hirelings, banish all self-will ? I 
wish we could see that hatred, malice, or 
vindictiveness, that neglect or indiffer- 
ence, that pride, spiritual or worldly, that 
covetousness or self-seeking, are all phases 
of self-will, sins that surely sap the vital- 
ity of all noblest living, are all of the spirit 
of the hireling, and that we might say 
to them collectively, You shall no longer 
claim to be my shepherd, my guide ; in 
my need you forsook me ; in my peril you 
abandoned me ; you fled because you were a 
hireling, and you are not able to lead me to 
the fold where I belong. This is an alle- 
gory, but is it not absolutely and plainly 
true that your life does not reach its high- 
est mark when you are taking for its leader 
a shepherd other than the best life the 



THE GOOD SHEPHERD. iqi 

world has ever known and Heaven has 
had to give ? Think of the young musician 
who should take an inferior master for his 
instructor, or the hopeful young artist who 
should take for his teacher some one who 
neither knew his art nor cared for his 
pupil. Think you, when you come to the 
delicate organization of your soul, that you 
do not need the best ? And the beauty of 
it all is that the best is so glad to be your 
leader. Hear him : " I came not to be 
ministered unto." Hear him, this King of 
kings and the Lord of lords : " I am come to 
minister." He came to serve you as your 
Good Shepherd, because you needed him, 
and because of the possibilities that lie 
within you of becoming fit companions, 
notice this, — fit companions of the Good 
Shepherd. For he says, " I know my 
sheep," and these words are spoken with 
the same tongue that elsewhere said, " Ye 
are my friends." "I know my sheep," 
— as if he were to say, I look down into 
your hearts and see every perplexity you 
have, every trouble, every uncertainty. I 
know every striving of your soul ; I am in 
sympathy with you ; I am touched with 
every effort you make. I know my sheep, 



I92 PERSONALITY. 

and they know me. And then he links 
this companionship with that which he 
has with the Father : " I know my sheep 
and they know me. I and my Father are 
one." 

He who runs may understand this par- 
able of the Good Shepherd. It needs no 
careful exposition, no skillful analysis, it 
appeals at once to the human conscious- 
ness, to your heart and to mine, and we 
recognize that in that Good Shepherd we 
have one our soul needs, who knows us and 
is known by us. 

Then, as if he were to bring to a close 
this beautiful parable, he says, " You are 
enfolded, you are cared for, I know you 
and am known by you, and I am your Good 
Shepherd as you are my faithful sheep." 
" I am the Shepherd and the Bishop of 
your souls ; I lead you, direct you, and 
guide you." But even then he ceases 
not. " Other sheep have I, which are 
not of this fold : them also I must bring 
with me ; and there shall be one fold and 
one shepherd." A necessary prophecy ! 
for if he be the Good Shepherd he will 
not forget the one sheep on the mountains 
lost. There is the parable of the ninety 



THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 1 93 

and nine. He does not forget the one lost 
sheep. He could not if he were the Good 
Shepherd, and if it is a brother or sister 
who is lost, or if you yourselves are lost, 
that Good Shepherd has not forgotten you. 
" Them also I must bring with me." Oh, 
the necessity of love, the imperative neces- 
sity! " I must bring them with me/' He will 
seek you. He will bring you home. He 
may have to drag you through the thorny 
thicket, your flesh may be lacerated, but in 
his arms you are held, the fold is not far 
distant ; there you shall be with him. I 
like to say this because it is so encouraging 
to know that God will yet have your lost 
friend or brother or sister, and in his own 
good time he will have you also. He is 
not done with you, nor will he be till your 
heart is made like the heart of a little 
child, soft, tender, gentle, patient, loving. 
Though it were the heart of a Nero, yet 
this shall come to pass. " There shall be 
one fold and one shepherd. ,, The strife 
of tongues, even though they be called 
Christian tongues, shall cease ; and wran- 
glings and bitterness and feuds, even 
though they be called Christian wranglings, 
bitterness, and feuds, shall come to an 



194 PERSONALITY. 

end ; and the fellowship in Christ, and of 
Christ, and with Christ, as the Bishop of our 
souls, the one Good Shepherd, shall be es- 
tablished, — the unity of God's family, when 
brother shall greet brother eye to eye, and 
shall realize that the omnipotent Shepherd 
does not stay his never-failing power, till 
he shall have accomplished the miracle of 
ages, the unity of those for whom he laid 
down his life ; for the Good Shepherd giv- 
eth, and continueth to give, and ever will 
give his life for the sheep. 

Do not go away from here to-night until 
you have looked fairly in the face that 
Good Shepherd as you have never beheld 
him before. Do not feel that you may 
wander and stray from his side. ~~ See in 
him the one who is to perform the mighty 
work in your soul of bringing you into the 
gentle, loving companionship of him, the 
most exquisite being the world has ever 
seen, the Good Shepherd of the sheep. 



XII. 

THE CHURCH. 

Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it. 
Eph. v. 25. 

26 April, i8gi. 



XII. 

THE CHURCH. 

Christ so loved the church that he gave 
himself to it, body, soul, and spirit. He 
gave all that there was in him to give. For 
it he realized all the redemptive forces of 
human life. He redeemed it. He loved 
it that he might sanctify it and cleanse it, 
and present it unto himself a glorious 
church, without spot or wrinkle, holy, 
without blemish. I want you to love the 
church, because Christ loved it ; because 
to love it is to love Christ. The personal 
element is inherent in the very considera- 
tion of this subject, because the church 
is composed of human souls, God's chil- 
dren, — of all human souls who have re- 
sponded to the call of " Friend, come up 
higher/' It is no wonder, then, Christ loved 
it. It is here to call human souls to come 
out of sin into holiness, to come from an 
abnormal to a normal condition of life, and 



1 98 PERSONA LITY. 

so St. Paul speaks of it as the " body of 
Christ," of which Christ is the head. 

This body has imperfections, but be- 
cause it is that body of which Christ is the 
head we do not cut off here a hand, take 
out there an eye, mutilate the possibilities 
of usefulness of the body, simply because 
they have imperfections. Christ loves the 
members of his own body with the hopeful- 
ness of love that these members may come 
out from their sin, respond to the call to 
holiness, and become through him sanc- 
tified and cleansed : that they may be pre- 
sented to him with an entire abnegation, 
consecration, and devotion ; that they may 
be a glorious church. To this state of life 
they are called, and therefore it is because 
of these possibilities that they may con- 
stitute a glorious church, that Christ loves 
them. 

The purpose of the church is to serve 
the head. Is it not ? The purpose of the 
members of the body is to serve the head 
of the body, —the hands to do by skill and 
aptness that for which they are constituted 
in grateful ministry to the demands and 
necessities indicated by the head ; the feet 
to be swift to do the errands of life and 



THE CHURCH. 1 99 

the message of usefulness. So it is all 
through the ministry of the body : the 
members are to serve the head, and the 
purpose of the church is not primarily to 
save the individual, as it is not primarily 
the purpose of the head to save the fingers 
and the hands and the feet, but in the dis- 
charge of their natural and necessary func- 
tions they are necessarily saved. As soon 
as my hand and arm may have exercise, ■ — 
that is, in discharging the natural function 
of the hand and of the arm, — that moment 
they are saved from uselessness, from de- 
cay, from death. If I bind my hand or my 
arm to my side in utter uselessness, it is 
only a question of time when it shall be 
utterly without power, seized of death. So 
the primary object is that the hand or 
the arm may each discharge its natural 
function, and the primary object of the 
church is that the members of the church 
may serve the head. 

Of course, in saying this, we are rec- 
ognizing the worthiness of the head of the 
church of Jesus Christ, as the one perfect 
human life whom it is the call to serve. 
So that the end of the church is that it 
may grow " into the measure of the stature 
of the fullness of Christ. " 



200 PERSONALITY. 

What a broad view you have of human 
life and of salvation ; what dignity for 
man, this exalting him to be a member of 
Jesus Christ, the one perfect life, the one 
manifestation of the Godlike to man, that 
as a member of Christ he is thus dischar- 
ging the purpose of his being, that he is 
serving Christ, that he is a member of 
Christ in active, willing, ready service, and 
that it is the end of his life that he shall 
grow into the measure of the stature of the 
fullness of that Christ ! It is hard for us to 
realize, with all these finite surroundings, 
that we are hands and feet and arms and 
eyes of him who is the perfect life ; that 
we are members of him ; that it is our pur- 
pose to serve him, and our end and destiny 
to be like him, so that we may be made a 
glorious church. 

The continuity of this church is self- 
evident. It is here to-day, is it not ? There 
are hunAn souls to - day who have re- 
sponded to the call, " Friend, come up 
higher," who have entered into the realiza- 
tion of the purpose of their being, who 
have taken Jesus Christ as their head ; and 
as the church is here to-day, so it was here 
yesterday, one hundred years ago, five hun- 



THE CHURCH. 201 

dred years ago, and a thousand years ago, 
till we get back to the very beginning, 
nearly two thousand years ago, There 
has been this continuity of the church, 
because the church is the body of Christ, 
because it is the continued life of Christ. 

Behold the responsibility, then, that rests 
upon us as members of him to continue 
his life in the world. It is also a witness 
to the fact of the necessity of an organ- 
ized fellowship of the body of Christ. The 
hand alone may not discharge its func- 
tion. The foot, separated from the body, 
cannot discharge its function. In the very 
construction of human life there is the 
necessity of an organized body. Hence 
there is a church, the visible, tangible body 
of Jesus Christ perpetuating the life of 
Christ among men. 

The church witnesses also to the neces- 
sity which lies, in the very nature of things, 
in the constitution of human life, for the 
fellowship of spiritual help and worship 
among brethren. We may reason about 
this as we choose, but it remains that we 
need the comfort, the assurance, the in- 
spiration of other souls, and he who holds 
himself aloof from visible and organic con- 



202 PERSONALITY. 

nection with the church has a serious 
charge to lay to his own conscience, since 
he has withheld strength and comfort and 
inspiration from those other members of 
Christ's body who need it. What right 
have I to say, " I will live alone" ? " No 
man liveth unto himself." What right have 
you or I to say, " I will stand outside of 
the church and refuse such inspiration, or 
comfort, or help, or sympathy, as I may 
possibly be able to impart to others " ? We 
do not stand alone ; and in this we rec- 
ognize a debt which each member owes 
to every other member of the one great 
family of God. 

Because of these considerations, that 
Christ loved the church as his own body, 
and because of the nature and of the pur- 
pose of the church, because of this continu- 
ity ever expressing the life of the church, 
because of this necessity for fellowship, 
the church is a divine institution : divine 
because it is a part of him who alone is 
divine, divine because the church is the 
body of him who is the expressed image of 
holiness, and divine because it calls human 
souls to a divine state of life. It is divine 
also because the changes it works in the 



THE CHURCH. 203 

lives of men are divine, and because the 
mission, the work, the ministry, the possi- 
bilities of the expression of human life are 
also divine. What spiritual development 
can there be without the sympathy, the 
comfort, the help, the inspiration which we 
may give to other souls to live broader, 
nobler, better lives ? The church, then, is 
a divine institution, and the marks of the 
church are those which characterized it at 
first, and only those. 

We read in the forty-second verse of the 
second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles 
that those early disciples, those early mem- 
bers of the church, those early parts of that 
body of which Christ was the head, con- 
tinued steadfast in the apostles* doctrine, 
in their fellowship, in the breaking of the 
bread and in the prayers, and those marks 
are ever to be marks of the members of the 
body of Christ, in every day and in every 
generation. 

The apostles' doctrine, reduced to its 
simple form, what is it ? You have it 
standing there in the Apostles' Creed, and 
even this is reduced to a simpler form. It 
was, and is, and ever shall be, a belief in 
God. " This is life eternal to know thee, 



204 PERSONALITY. 

the only God." It is where the human 
soul arises, stands on its feet ; ventures to 
lift its eyes, to look upward and into the 
Father's face, and comes with affectionate 
trust to believe in God the Father. Oh, 
what a sublime doctrine that is ! The apos- 
tles' doctrine, the martyrs' doctrine, the con- 
fessors' doctrine, the doctrine of saints, 
the doctrine of Christ — belief in God. 
Nothing is said, or should be said (which 
would be an impertinence here), of belief 
about God. A thousand and one difficul- 
ties might thus arise.. We as individuals 
might never reach a consensus of thought 
and opinion in striving to give expression 
to our thought about God, whereas the one 
holy catholic church can lift its heart as 
one soul and say, " I believe in God." And 
the necessary expression of this belief is 
the belief in Christ, through whom alone 
we know the fullness of God. Who else 
has so expressed the universal life as this 
same Jesus ? and what marvel is it, there- 
fore, that he said, " This is life eternal to 
know thee, the only true God, and Jesus 
Christ, whom thou hast sent " ? The soul, 
as it rises in spiritual consciousness of its 
own powers and of the reality of its spirit- 



THE CHURCH. 205 

ual being, loves to trust in Jesus, to believe 
in Christ, adores this beauty of holiness, 
and folds to its heart the divine sublimity 
of the life of Jesus. 

The apostles' doctrine, then, is one of 
the marks of the church, a belief in God, 
in Christ, and in Christ's continued light, 
the HoTy Spirit. For, as has been said, as 
we may think of God as a ray of pure white 
light, incapable of being apprehended by 
the eye until it be broken into prismatic 
hues by the life of Jesus, so the Holy Spirit 
may be thought of as that continued light 
reaching the earth, softening the soul with 
generative force, bringing into beauty the 
powers of nature, softening the heart of 
man, and developing and quickening the 
spiritual life. 

"They continued also in the apostles' 
fellowship.'' And what was that? Mem- 
bers of the same bodv. Who are the mem- 
bers ? Every human soul is called to be 
a member. Every human soul has the 
privilege of being a member. Every hu- 
man soul has within him the obligation to 
be a member. Every human soul is a 
child of God, and to every soul the call is, 
" Friend, come up higher." Those who 



206 PERSOXALITY. 

have responded to that call, and by the 
initial step of baptism have signified their 
response to that call, — for in baptism 
there is a taking of the belief in God, in 
Christ, in the Holy Spirit, — those who 
have responded to that call, then, are to 
live in that fellowship as brethren one of 
another. ^ 

But some shall say, We cannot love 
all men, for many are unlovable, degraded, 
repulsive, brutal. Oh, that is anti-Chris- 
tian ! Christ loved all men, not so much 
for what they are, as for what they are des- 
tined to be. Because this poor hand is 
deformed, shall I love it the less ? God 
made it. It is part of my body ; it may, 
though imperfectly, serve the body, and I 
must love these members of my body 
which God has made. This is Christian 
socialism. So the obligation rests upon 
every human soul to love his brother as 
himself, not because of his perfections, but 
because of the possibilities that are within 
him, because of the source whence he came, 
and because of his being a child of the 
same heavenly Father. 

In this fellowship there is unity, or there 
should be. Offenses must come, but " woe 



THE CHURCH. 207 

to him by whom the offense cometh." On 
our hearts and souls and consciences there 
may be, this morning, the burden of the 
offense that we have been hindering this 
unity of the body of Christ. What right 
have I to say to the hand, " I have no need 
of thee " ? and why do we dare point to an- 
other child of God, as if in derision, be- 
cause his way of serving the same God is 
not our way ? How much responsibility 
there may be resting upon us for hinder- 
ing this possible unity of all souls who 
hold Jesus as their head, who are mem- 
bers of the church! In that unity of the 
church there must be fellowship, and I be- 
lieve that we should do everything within 
our power, even to the changing of canons, 
to cement that fellowship and to seal it 
with the devotion of our own lives. We 
have longed, perchance theoretically, for 
organic unity, and yet have shut the door 
in the face of those who were also seeking 
for this unity. Remember that the marks 
of the church are those things which char- 
acterized the infant church and no more, 
and he who ignores those marks is not 
fulfilling the requirements of a member of 
the bodv of Christ. 



208 PERSONALITY. 

As to the Christian ministry, as a mat- 
ter of fact there are three orders, bishops, 
priests, and deacons, and there have been 
such for many centuries. 

" But the case of St. Paul receiving his 
apostleship direct from God and not from 
the apostles (who might have exhibited an 
unwillingness to impart it to him) is a per- 
petual protest against the danger of hu- 
man interference in things concerning the 
closest relations of the spirit of man with 
God." This is the way another puts it. 
Moreover we have nearly lost one order 
in our imperfect diaconate, not lost actu- 
ally, yet practically, because we pass from 
the diaconate to the priesthood merely as 
from one step to another. Yet who would 
be justified in repelling us merely because 
we had allowed the diaconate to slip out of 
recognition ? And so, have you and I any 
right to avoid others because they have 
suffered another order of the ministry to 
fall into disuse ? Even the Roman Church, 
has she retained her episcopate ? It is not 
a time for us to judge our brethren, but for 
us to accept gratefully any real beginnings 
of a unity among Christians, any possible 
realization of the communion of saints. 



THE CHURCH. 209 

Then there is the " breaking of the 
bread," which stands in the minds of the- 
ologians for the sacraments, baptism and 
the Lord's supper. There the sacraments 
have stood from the beginning, in one form 
or another, with the essence always the 
same. They stand there as perpetual mon- 
uments of the continuity of the apostolic 
church, as the continuity of the Christian 
church, the continuity of the incarnation 
of the life of Christ. What your opinion 
about them may be is not pertinent to this 
discussion. It is simply for us to preserve 
these marks of the church, and in grateful 
gladness accept what the good, true head 
of the church provides. 

As to the worship, we read that the 
early church continued steadfast "in the . 
prayers." And see what our privileges 
are. Here we open this prayer book. We 
do not care to present one single argument 
for its value. We simply say : " Here is 
a book of very rich treasures." I open it 
at random, and find in it the Psalms of Da- 
vid, full of words that have expressed the 
uplifting of human souls for nearly three 
thousand years, and I make no comment. 
I open it again at random, and I find the 



2 1 PERSONALITY. 

Lord's Prayer, that outpouring of the holy 
life of Jesus, who taught us thus to pray, 
and for very nearly two thousand years 
these words have been uttered by millions, 
and I make no comment. I turn to it again 
at random, and I find the " Gloria in Excel- 
sis." It has been there since 633, and pos- 
sibly since the year 300, and through all 
these intervening centuries it has expressed 
the outpouring of divine praise. Again, I 
find the hymn called the " Te Deum," and 
since the year 527, and possibly even ear- 
lier, it has been sung as a grateful Chris- 
tian paean to Almighty God. Thus I turn 
at random up and down the pages of this 
same book, and I find that nearly four fifths 
of it are in phrases taken directly from 
the holy Scriptures, and still I make no 
comment. 

But this book is the heritage and prop- 
erty of every human soul that will take it. 
There is no exclusive ownership in it. It 
belongs to every human soul. 

In speaking, therefore, of the church, as 
to her doctrine, as to her fellowship, as to 
her ministry, as to her sacraments, as to 
her form of worship, as to her liturgy, the 
service of the holy communion, which has 



THE CHURCH. 211 

stood there substantially as it is now since 
the year 150, we speak not so much of 
rights as of privileges. 

The rights of the church we are silent 
about, but of the privileges of the church 
let us speak with outpouring and grateful 
hearts. And should not the heart pour 
itself out in gratitude ? As it is every 
man's duty to preach and to pray, so it 
must be every man's duty to praise God 
in grateful, loving service for the priceless 
blessings he has given us in the church 
which he loves. 

As to personal responsibility, remem- 
ber the words of St. Paul, that Christ loved 
the church, and gave himself for it, that 
he might sanctify it, you and me, that he 
might cleanse it, you and me, that he 
might present it unto himself, a glorious 
church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any 
such thing ; and in his own good time God 
will accomplish that, so that you and I 
shall be presented to him, holy and without 
blemish. Remember these words, then. Re- 
member your privilege as members of his 
body, to serve him who is the head of the 
church, and remember also your destiny, 
to grow unto the measure of the stature of 
the fullness of Jesus Christ our Lord. 



XIII. 

ALL SAINTS'. 

Let not your heart be troubled. — St. John xiv. 1-6. 

/ November, i8gi. 



XIII. 

ALL SAINTS'- 

If our Lord were to stand here to-day, on 
this glorious thanksgiving morning, — for 
such is All Saints' day to rejoicing souls, — 
I think he would say just such words as 
we have taken now from his lips. I think 
he would say, If ye believe in God, be of 
good cheer. If ye trust in God ; if ye know 
that beneath your sorrow are the ever- 
lasting arms ; if ye know that your feet, 
as they seem to slip, are stayed on the 
everlasting Rock of Ages ; then, if so ye 
trust and believe and know, let not your 
heart be troubled. Be of good cheer. Ye 
know the world, and the world hates you, 
falsifies your life and your character, de- 
spises you, torments you, and persecutes 
you. But what of that ? As gold is tried 
in the fire, so sorrow, and sin, and tempta- 
tion, and grief, and affliction, and all that 
you sum up and say, "This is pain," shall 



2 1 6 PERSONALITY. 

work their perfect work, and from out the 
furnace, the dross left behind, ye shall 
come. Be of good cheer, I have overcome 
the world. I who endured for you the 
cross, the tree of sin, and despised the 
shame, and was persecuted and buffeted 
and tormented, I who had not where to 
lay my head, I say to you, Be of good 
cheer, I have overcome the world. " Let 
not your heart be troubled : ye believe in 
God, believe also in me." 

You hear me say : " In my Father's 
home." You have thought in your short- 
sightedness, or in your doubt, or in your 
hesitancy, or in your unbelief (which I pity), 
— you have thought that my Fathers house 
is a small spot in the universe. You do 
not realize that it is my Father's home, 
and that wherever you are you are not ab- 
sent from it. His heart circles the globe. 
From its warm embrace no child of his 
can escape, and where my Father's heart 
is, — where his life is, — there is his home ; 
and in it are many stopping places, many 
abiding places, many staying places, where 
a man may rest, faint with the journey, 
dust-covered, soiled, begrimed, footsore, in 
distress, outcast, forsaken, — many stopping 



ALL SAINTS'. 2\J 

places where such may rest, but they are 
always in my Father's home. And when 
you, a pilgrim, stumbling, oppressed, lacer- 
ated, mastered for a moment because of 
your temptation — nay, because of your sin 
and crime ; even there where you stumble, 
fall down, where you are prostrated, is a 
stopping place in my Father's home. When 
another form of trial comes to you, pain, 
grief, affliction, or bereavement ; when you 
pause again, this time to close the eyes of 
those you love, it is still a stopping place 
in the Father's home, where you are held 
in the Father's heart, embraced by the 
Father's love. Underneath are still the 
everlasting arms. 

Enfolded in his arms in the moment of 
your bereavement, as well as in the mo- 
ment of your transgression, affliction, 
doubt, or despair, it is but a stopping place 
where you halt, it is but a staying place in 
the Father's home. And when again a cer- 
tain rivulet is reached, where we pause, yet 
spring gently from bank to bank as from 
life to life, even as when before the gate 
of death we pause, it is only another stay- 
ing place in the Father's home. " In my 
Father's house are many mansions : if it 



2l8 PERSONALITY. 

were not so, I would have told you." They 
are his mansions. They are in his house. 
It is another way of saying, — of course, 
it is figurative ; our Lord is speaking in 
parable, — it is another way of saying that, 
come what will, nothing shall separate us 
from the love of God, whether it be sorrow, 
trial, affliction, transgression, sin, chastise- 
ment, whatsoever may come to us, nothing 
can shut out the Father's presence. 

If we believe in God (or, appealing to 
the nobler side of our life, our Lord refuses 
to make it conditional, and says : " Ye be- 
lieve in God "), be strong, be brave. Let 
the arm once more resume its power and 
vigor. Be strong, because of the victories 
that faith has won. Time would fail me 
to speak of Barak and David and Samson 
and Jephtha — those who were persecuted, 
sawn asunder, clad in sheepskins and goat- 
skins and wandered in the desert, but be- 
cause of their faith they were not troubled. 
They were of good cheer. Their life was 
linked with the life of him who had con- 
quered, and, in being faithful unto death, 
they knew (figure again) they should be 
crowned with life. Man cannot receive 
life in its largeness and fullness except on 



ALL SAINTS 1 . 219 

the ground of faith. His life must rest on 
faith. His largeness of being must find 
its bottom foundation stone in trust. He 
must find himself rooted, — radically, only- 
radical souls take hold fully of life, — -man 
must be rooted in the life of God, by faith 
by trust, by belief ; and then, superior to 
man's infirmities, superior to his tempta- 
tions, what may man do to him ? 

"Let not your heart be troubled. " Do 
not try to carry this world on your shoul- 
ders. It is God's world; not yours. Do 
not try to carry the welfare of your own 
soul, even, on your own shoulders. It is 
God's soul ; not yours. Responsibility in 
its larger sense belongs not to you, but 
only in its limited sense. God has assumed 
in the very nature, in the very condition of 
his being, the largest, fullest responsibility 
(and is he not equal to it ?). It remains for 
you and me and every human soul to trust, 
to believe, to lean, and God will carry his 
own world and all that dwelleth therein, 
and you in particular. We have reversed 
this. We have fancied that the weight of 
the world's welfare rests upon us. We 
have felt that with us is the responsibility 
of the welfare of our souls. Not so if we 



2 20 PERSONALITY. 

have the first condition of life — namely, 
belief in God. " God 's in his heaven — 
All 's right with the world " and with every 
individual in the world. " Be of good 
cheer, I have overcome the world/ ' " Be 
thou faithful unto death, and I will give 
thee a crown of life." This is not equiva- 
lent to saying that it matters not how a 
man lives. It matters everything. Only, 
when he has taken hold of life, his respon- 
sibility ceases ; when he has taken hold of 
God, then God completes the growth. I 
do not think that the tree says to itself, 
" I must take care that in April there is a 
bud, and, a little later, there is a leaf, and, 
still later on, a blossom, and then fruit." 
If the life of the tree were altogether arti- 
ficial, if it were altogether arbitrary, dra- 
matic, unreal, unvital, then I think the tree 
should be much troubled, much concerned 
for the flower and fruitage, not only of its 
own, but of all other trees. But if the tree 
be vital and real, if it have life, if it be not 
arbitrary, artificial, dramatic, if its roots 
strike deep to find the wellspring of life 
that it may take hold of life more fully and 
largely, then it has no responsibility, no 
accountability. It has no anxiety as to its 



ALL SAINTS'. 221 

growth, its leafage, its blossom, its harvest. 
So the soul that stays on God has no 
cause, or ground, or reason, for being trou- 
bled as to its future ; nay, or as to its pres- 
ent. Nor has it anything to do with the 
past. The tree must not, does not, turn 
back and say, " Thus was I wounded when 
the storm raged ; thus was I rent asunder 
by the lightning's stroke ; thus was I 
blasted ; thus became I gnarled, and, look- 
ing back, I am filled with fear and trem- 
bling." Not thus does the tree groan, but 
the past is gone — dead. Nature heals the 
wound, and by the process of the law of 
life it takes on new strength. Just as the 
acorn does not say, " Thus am I overcome 
by disintegrating forces ; thus am I made 
to perish in the soil." It is all true, and 
so the acorn might have said, were the 
acorn contrary to the law of life, if it did 
not repose on the life that was above, be- 
neath and around it, — it might have said, 
" I cannot endure this disintegrating pro- 
cess — I cannot die." Yet die it must, 
but without tears or regret, and in its dy- 
ing it takes hold of life, and the forest 
monarch is the justification of the acorn's 
entombment and death ! 



222 PERSONALITY. 

" Be of good cheer. Let not your heart 
be troubled." Tempest tossed, tempest 
pelted and beaten 5 tempest swayed and 
rocked, tempest down-thrown, be not trou- 
bled ; for when he who utters this was 
beaten upon by the fiercest storm the ma- 
lignity of hateful men could cause to beat 
upon him, they erected what they thought 
to be a tree of disgrace, but it proved a 
throne, and on it they lifted him, and en- 
throned there, he thus drew all men unto 
him. 

" And if I go to prepare a place for you, 
I will come again, and receive you unto 
myself." The intimacy of the relationship 
is not only not severed by what we call 
death, it is not even jarred. The com- 
munion, one fellowship, one life, one body, 
one universe, has its own continuity. What 
a prophetic vision St. Paul had, to look with 
discerning eye through all these misty cen- 
turies, thick with the fog of blinding super- 
stitions, and see, with penetrating clear- 
ness, what we are only beginning to see ! 
Therefore because there is no separation 
from this cloud of witnesses by which we 
are surrounded, because the ground of their 
being is the same as the ground of our be- 



ALL SAINTS', 22$ 

ing, — namely, God, — the time will come 
when we shall see that the violet and the 
oak are inseparable in their oneness of life, 
and you, humble, obscure, as out of the way 
of observation as the modest violet, shall 
one day find your life joined to the lives of 
the greatest spirits — like St. Paul's — the 
world has ever seen, that your life is knit 
to Christ's ; because the ground of your 
life is the same as the ground of the life 
of every other soul, and the same as the 
life of Christ. "Because I live, ye shall 
live also." 

Let not your heart be troubled, there- 
fore, either about this world, or about what 
comes to you. Taking for granted that ye 
believe in God, — and how can a man fail 
to believe in God ? He may, with stam- 
mering lips and faltering tongue, be unable 
to formulate any belief as a more gifted 
brother can do, but what man feeling 
life in him, about him, beneath him, and 
around him, can fail to believe in God ? — 
taking for granted, then, belief in God, let 
not your heart be troubled. Nothing can 
come to you of whatsoever nature that 
shall not minister, — I will not check the 
application of that nor limit it, — whatso- 



224 PERSONALITY. 

ever shall come to you shall in some way 
minister to the proving of your soul, to 
the building up your nature into the like- 
ness of God. Look at David. There are 
greater souls here than David's. He took 
as much of life as he was capable of re- 
ceiving, but when Christ gives a man 
larger visions he becomes more filled with 
life and with God. And because these 
souls, like Isaiah's, like St. John the Evan- 
gelist's, like that of Moses, like that of the 
countless throng that no man can num- 
ber, because these souls have grown — I 
think I must say grown by reason of every- 
thing that has come to them — so be as- 
sured, " Let not your heart be troubled.'' 
Whatever of affliction, transgression, disap- 
pointment, apparent failure, distress, or sin, 
whatever seems to tear and rend asunder the 
very fibres of your being, remember that 
they all, in God's making, conforming, and 
loving hand, shall minister to the upbuild- 
ing, the perfecting, the ultimate justifica- 
tion of your souls. It is a joyous gospel this, 
this gospel of good cheer, that finds its 
basis in the life of God. 

" And the way ye know." Still we are 
so blind, dull, stupid, we do not under- 



ALL SAINTS'. 225 

stand, while all the time the way lies be- 
fore us. Must the sun, shining bright and 
clear, explain himself, showing his creden- 
tials, when he is fructifying every force 
and potency in the universe ? Must the 
Christ, the light of life, explain himself 
further to those who are of dull ear and 
slow heart, and listen, but do not com- 
prehend ? Do you not see that he who 
shines in the full warmth and power of 
life must be the Sun of righteousness ? 
And the pathway that his brilliant efful- 
gence makes, streaming from the throne 
of God into the darkest, most noisome 
valleys of earth, must be the way for hu- 
man souls to tread. Must he still say : 
" I am the light," when the light is shining 
full on the face of the darkened soul so 
perplexed in the deepening twilight, till 
suddenly there bursts from the western 
sky the clear bright light of him who said : 
" Be of good cheer, I have overcome the 
world " ? So he tells Thomas (oh, I do 
not want to hear him tell me again), " I 
am the way, the truth, and the life." Be- 
cause, O Jesus ! thou art the way, the 
truth, and the life, because thou comest, 
because thou goest, because thou returnest, 



226 PERSONALITY. 

because the intimacy of that close com- 
munion and fellowship is not even jarred 
by what I have blindly called the article 
of death, therefore those whom thou hast 
led before me through the dark valley and 
the shadow to shining heights in thy eter- 
nal presence, — I shall not be troubled con- 
cerning them. All the saints are with 
thee ; I cannot be troubled about them, 
for I believe in God, and I believe also in 
thee, O Son of God, O Word of God, O 
Light of God, O Life of God, O Way and 
Truth of God ! " 

Ring out the bells of joy, then, for all thy 
saints in light, and may we grow, — grow 
as everything in nature calls out to us to 
join their chorus in growth. Oh, could our 
ears but catch the note of growing nature's 
song ! May we grow day by day, grace by 
grace, into the likeness of him, the captain 
of our salvation, the author, the finisher of 
our faith. " Ye believe in God, believe also 
in me ! " 



XIV. 

VINES OF SAMARIA. 

Thou shalt yet plant vines upon the mountains of 
Samaria. — Jer. xxxi. 5. 

20 September, i8gi. 



XIV. 



VINES OF SAMARIA. 



This is the sure hope, the calm, stead- 
fast optimism, the confident belief rooted 
in the depths of reason, bound fast by the 
very fibres of a soul that has seen God 
face to face : " Thou shalt yet plant vines 
upon the mountains of Samaria, ,, and the 
vines stand for sustenance, nourishment, 
cheer, prosperity, for the soul's welfare. It 
is the hope, the reasonable hope, the firm 
conviction of Jeremiah, both for himself 
and for his people, that the soul's pros- 
perity is sure with God. The soul's vine 
may not appear to be growing ; its roots 
may be covered from sight, planted out in 
the dark valleys where little of sunlight 
and possible development can come to it. 
For every man knows that upon the hill- 
sides the vines grow best, yet the time 
shall come (as I hope we may yet say, 
must come), when on the hilltops " shalt 



230 PERSONALITY. 

thou yet plant vines." It is the hope, the 
calm deliberate conviction, of every soul 
that has seen God. It rests in the know- 
ledge of God. 

The husbandman rests the hope of his 
harvest upon the knowledge of seedtime 
and harvest ; it is no guess. The parent 
rests the future of his child on the know- 
ledge whence the gift, or the knowledge of 
the growth, of the increased strength and 
health of the child, and makes his plans 
for the child's future accordingly. The 
physician knows, not guesses, that all na- 
ture tends toward recovery, and on this 
knowledge rests his hope, his calm deliber- 
ate hope, of returning health, strength, and 
vigor. When this knowledge has come to 
souls, it has come sometimes as a light from 
heaven, striking the hidden genius of God 
which lies dormant in every human being ; 
striking forth its latent fire till it illumi- 
nates the individual spiritual nature, and, 
in some instances, sets ablaze the world 
with the molten gold, the glory of holi- 
ness, as in such souls as those of Moses, 
Isaiah, and this prophet Jeremiah, and John 
the Evangelist, and St. Paul, and our 
blessed Lord, and in countless saints, con- 



VINES OF SAMARIA, 23 1 

fessors, martyrs in all centuries, even to 
this present moment, where in humble cot 
and rude cabin, nay, in king's palace, 
and in the abode of the rich, there are 
souls whose genius for good has been 
touched by this knowledge of God, till 
they are illuminated with the confidence 
of their soul's progress in him, that all is 
well with them, that their vine shall yet 
be planted on the mountain hilltops of Sa- 
maria. 

Such men have seen God face to face ; 
they are never the same again. 

You cannot take away from them this 
vision ; it has burned itself into their 
souls. They are as full of God as the red 
blossomed tulip is of fire. No arguments 
can rob them of it. No metaphysical sub- 
tleties can deprive them of this reality ; 
as who shall say, " We will withdraw from 
the sunlight until we have examined the 
theories of colors and prismatic hues." 
Having seen God, they know in whom they 
have believed. You are never again the 
same after this coming into the presence 
of God and seeing him face to face. The 
warp and woof of your soul's history is 
being woven constantly, and you may not 



232 PERSONALITY. 

pull out this thread of rich red glory, this 
vision of God; it is a part of your soul's 
life. 

This knowledge of God is the knowledge 
of the God whom Christ hath revealed. 
Christ declares him as a God of love, of 
life, of personality, of all that is positive as 
implied in these terms, and -not negative. 
It is absolute unreason to think of God in 
his infinity as including evil as well as 
good, hate as well as love, the negative as 
well as the positive, death as well as life. 
So I firmly believe. Language must al- 
ways bear its own limitations. I may not 
express, by any terms I am able to employ, 
the accurate story of my soul, of my life ; 
nor may I say all that is true of God when 
I try to describe him in terms of love, of 
life, of personality ; but I only say that 
what is positive rests in God and the nega- 
tive has no place in him, and while I may 
delude myself with all sorts of intellectual 
vagaries, I realize the unreason of it all 
when I make him a God of confusion, not 
of order, of death and not of life. God 
reveals himself, he declares himself to me, 
to my soul, to my reason, to all my facul- 
ties, as life, positive, full, and complete. 



VINES OF SAMARIA. 233 

I speak to God from my soul as to a per- 
son realizing all the time the limitations of 
the term, and yet I say " person " because 
it describes the highest expression of life 
with which I am familiar. I do not say it 
describes the highest expression of life yet 
to be declared, for of this I know nothing, 
and whenever that higher expression is 
made clear to me I shall take the higher 
term to describe it ; but till then, " per- 
son" describes the highest expression of 
life. 

God lives, and because he is life there is 
association. There cannot be life without 
association. Solitariness is of death. The 
very awfulness of sin is that it separates, 
isolates, cuts off, leaves standing alone, and 
because alone "the wages of sin is death." 
Solitariness is death. Life carries with it 
the necessary thought of association, and 
because of this association my soul must 
live. It is unreason to think even of God 
as alone. He needs your soul. God can- 
not live without your soul. He cannot live 
alone ; it is a contradiction in terms. The 
very thought of God without human life 
is impossible, and my hope, my sure, calm 
hope, my conviction of the prosperity of 



234 PERSONALITY. 

my soul, rests in the very being of the life 
of God, in the very thought of association. 
I cannot take him out of the universe, nor 
can I take my soul out of the world. And 
because my soul is in the universe, as are 
the planets as they swing in their courses, 
— nay, for a greater reason than can touch 
the stars, because I am in the universe as a 
soul, and because God is life, and because 
life implies association, — the one cannot 
and will not live without the other. Though 
I may be dwelling in the valleys, buried 
from sight, yet as God lives, so my soul 
cannot be taken out of this universe of as- 
sociation and life. It must, one day or 
other, creep up the sides of the mountains 
and blossom on the hilltop. My soul must 
prosper ; bask in the sunshine of his life. 
I must say to my soul, " Thou shalt yet 
plant vines upon the mountains of Sa- 
maria." Thus the ultimate thought of God 
is life, and there cannot be life without as- 
sociation. Why, it is the very cardinal 
principle of Christianity — fellowship, as- 
sociation, life with life. Your soul is in 
the world, that is, in the universe, and it 
cannot be taken out. You may not pull 
down the sun from his throne, and no man 



VINES OF SAMARIA. 235 

may tear my soul from God, and the hour 
must come when the soul shall prosper, 
shall live, shall glorify itself, and so glorify 
its Maker. 

As this is the revelation of the revealer ; 
as it is the discovery of the discoverer ; as 
it is the unfolding of the unfolder, the ut- 
terance of him who is the spoken, the eter- 
nal Word, the manifestation of Jesus, the 
Christ, the Son of God ; as it is the Word 
made flesh ; as this is the truth that flashes 
from the face of the soul of him who is 
the Sun of Righteousness, — so it is the 
truth that binds our souls to life eternal, 
for this is life eternal to know thee, God, 
and no man can take this life from us. 

This manifestation of God in Christ 
shows us who God is, in whom we believe, 
and it shows us who man is. Inferentially, 
we have already discovered in this revela- 
tion of God somewhat of the nature of man. 
We have seen how man's soul is essen- 
tially a part of God, of the essence of God. 
We have seen that this soul of man cannot 
be taken from God. Every manifesta- 
tion of truth in the individual is a mani- 
festation of God. Whenever we read the 
book of any great life, do we not sometimes 



236 PERSONALITY, 

feel, as we are told of the achievement of 
this great man and that, as if we ourselves 
could triumph like Job, or like Moses free 
a people ? It is the divine that is welling 
up in you, the oneness you have with all 
human life, the participation you experi- 
ence in all truth. And when you come to 
Christ, you feel that what he is, is possible 
for you also. The genius of spirituality is 
within every human soul, and when the mo- 
ment comes and the eyes are opened and 
the man awakes to see who and what he 
is, behold, he is touched by God, and all 
things become possible to him. So all men 
are born to be parts of God, to be like 
Christ. Every man has within him this 
genius of spirituality that is to seize the 
divine fire of God, and in that fire to see 
God's face bright and clear in his own soul, 
and thus he himself is to illuminate man- 
kind. 

As Jesus is the life-giving vine, so may I 
plant my vines on the mountains of Sa- 
maria, so may I, by living, give to others, 
and in thus giving receive life. Thus our 
whole attitude toward God and man is 
changed. Our first thought now is not as 
to what we are receiving or may receive 



VINES OF SAMARIA. 237 

from God ; all notion of receiving is crowded 
out by the larger truth of giving, till we look 
to our fellow-men as to those to whom we 
may give, and take no thought of receiving. 
The vine lives to give, and in giving re- 
ceives life abundantly. So as I first bear 
fruit I become like him who is the vine, and 
in the very life-giving and fruit-bearing I 
receive life and receive it abundantly. " I 
am come that ye may have life." How? 
By giving life, by becoming the fruitful 
vine on the wall, whose branches hang over 
and kiss the limpid stream below, and 
whose fruit refreshes the weary traveler. 
This is the imagery of the Hebrew prophet, 
the imagery of divine truth, of one who is 
first the vine, giving life, cheer, sustenance 
to others, and thus in the very giving re- 
ceives life from the eternal source of life 
itself. 

So, when any soul takes hold of truth, 
he takes hold of God. It matters not 
whether it is a hod carrier in whom a drop 
of generosity quickens the lifeblood as he 
gives the cup of cold water, whether it is 
the clerk behind the desk, the book-keeper 
at his ledger, the business man in his 
counting-room, the carpenter at his plane ; 



238 PERSONALITY, 

wherever there is the taking hold of truth, 
there is the taking hold of God, and once 
having received the touch of God, he is 
never the same man again. If I am told 
that if I am touched by sin I am never the 
same man again, why may I not be told 
the greater truth, that when I am touched 
with holiness, when I touch truth, when 
once I see God face to face, I am never 
the same man again ? The cup of cold 
water, the struggle after righteousness, the 
acquisition of mastery, the earnest desire 
after holiness however insignificant it may 
be, — all have become a part of my personal 
history, and I can never be again the man 
I was before the glory of God's righteous- 
ness fired my heart. 

How stimulating is this thought ! I am 
not going to appeal to the sting of sin. 
Sin is negative ; it has nothing to do with 
God. I rather call your thought to this 
truth, that where you have taken hold once 
of righteousness you are not the same you 
were before, and never again can be. It is 
an eternal fact. No man can tear that cup 
of cold water from your history, how r ever 
base and mean and despicable you may 
have been at some time in your life. Wher- 



VIXES OF SAMARIA. 239 

ever you have been noble, stretched the 
lame hand of faith and touched but the 
hem of the garment of the Sun of Right- 
eousness, you have become what you never 
were before, and can never again be the 
same. It has entered into your personal 
history, and you are the richer for it. You 
are not the same man you were ten years 
ago. Oh, how you have struggled to over- 
come that habit ! It matters not what octo- 
pus it was which threatened your very life, 
the mastery you have gained is a fact, it is 
a taking hold of God, and that fact can 
never be eradicated from your being. 

Because God has been with you through 
all these struggles, through all this con- 
test ; been with you in the hour of partial 
victory and somewhat of conquest, the 
hour of attainment ; because he has been 
with you as, with painful fingers, you have 
scraped away the leaves and mould, pulled 
away the stone and rock, taken off the 
pressure of some great obstacle that was 
preventing your soul from springing up ; 
because he has been with you in those 
dark moments in the chill valley of your 
soul's history, experience, and develop- 
ment, have you not the sure hope that he 



24O PERSONALITY. 

will be with you yet again ? Do you not 
know it to be true ? The worst is over ; 
it matters not now what may come to 
your soul. It may be nail-prints, a cross, 
it cannot be so bad as what has gone be- 
fore, because now you have more of God 
than ever, because you are not the same 
man you were, because your soul is not the 
same, and strength now is yours you had 
not then. You are the soul that dared to 
pluck its life from the burning and fly with 
it to God. This touch of genius must be 
well pleasing to your heavenly Father, well 
pleasing to behold in the son, in his child, 
in you, as he sees you dare to grasp your 
soul, and carry it to him to plant, to prune, 
to nurture, that it may grow and bud and 
bear fruit on the mountains of Samaria. 

I long to have every soul feel that the 
best is yet to be ; that nothing can separate 
us from the love of God, as it cannot from 
the life of Christ ; that in every human 
soul there is a genius of spirituality ; that 
every human life has within it the pos- 
sibility of oneness with God ; that this 
calm assurance rests in the very life, the 
very being of God. Oh, in that confidence, 
what courage you are going to feel in tak- 



VINES OF SAMARIA. 24 1 

ing, planting, nurturing, caring for the vine 
of your soul ! How strong you are going to 
be as you face all experiences and condi- 
tions ; with what spontaneity this new life, 
now awakened, grows ! How it laughs and 
sings in the dew and sunlight ; nay, also, 
when the wind and storm sweep over it, 
still it is safe, chants praises to its heavenly 
Father, who is in that cloud and storm now 
as he was in the past, and from that cloud 
and storm pours out his life in love, his 
strength in pity, and sustains the soul 
through all experiences that await it ere it 
enters the eternal presence of the great 
husbandman who planted the vine, Christ 
Jesus, the stem of Jesse, who planted hu- 
man souls to grow as branches of the one 
vine. 

O my soul, wait thou still upon God, 
for thou shalt yet plant thyself on the sunlit 
sides of the mountains of Samaria, 



XV. 

PERSONAL FAITH THE GROUND 
OF LIFE. 

If ye believe not that I am, ye shall die in your sins. - 
St. John viii. 24. 

25 October, 1891. 



XV. 

PERSONAL FAITH THE GROUND OF LIFE. 

As if he might have said : " If ye believe 
that I am, ye must live in your holiness/' 
There is something pathetic in watching 
the struggle of a life aglow with the courage 
of its convictions, striving to persuade men, 
striving to compel them to take hold of the 
truth. Why, it is truth that shall make 
you free. He that committeth sin is the 
bondservant of sin, but he that taketh 
hold of the Son is free, and if the Son 
shall make you free, ye shall be free in- 
deed. 

Here is a life that believes in himself, 
entirely self-centred in the only true sense 
that life ever can be self-centred, as the 
sun in heaven is self-centred, feeling its 
own power, believing in its own power, 
striving through fog and cloud and mist 
and storm to manifest its own power. 
Here is a life self-poised, conscious of its 



246 PERSONALITY. 

own wholeness, integrity, truth, and vi- 
tality (" which of you convinceth me of 
sin ?"), striving to convince men that there 
is such a thing as life ; striving to compel 
men to take hold of life ; seeing in the 
great depth of the pity of his large heart 
man held in bondage by sin, men pros- 
trated by powers over which they cannot 
gain the mastery, seeing human lives thus 
supinely overcome by the baser forces 
which contend for supremacy. With great 
pity, with the strong courage of conviction, 
he strives to hold forth life to these souls 
in such a way that they shall take hold of 
these vitalizing forces and escape from 
their bondage and enter into the largeness 
and fullness of the liberty of entire life for 
which they were made, for which they 
exist, and to which they ultimately shall 
come. 

If it is pathetic to watch such struggles 
of a life so inspired by the courage of its 
convictions in endeavoring to impart this 
life to others, so, also, it is sublime. It 
is a sublime unfolding of the thought of 
Christ in this eighth chapter of St. John's 
Gospel: "Before Abraham was, I am." 
" If ye believe that I am, ye shall live in 



FAITH THE GROUND OF LIFE. 247 

your wholeness." A great gulf-current, so 
to £ay, of spiritual life, of vitalizing energy, 
circles the universe of human existence, 
where human life, coming to the surface, 
reaches forth its grasp, striving to take hold 
of life in its entirety, to enter into the free- 
dom of perfect life, to escape from the waves 
that are threatening its very existence, and 
in this warm, vitalizing current of eternal 
life, which encircles the universe of hu- 
man striving, is the life of Jesus. I mean 
by this that Jesus became conscious of this 
oneness of spiritual life, and, in the con- 
sciousness of the existence of that oneness 
of spiritual life, he realized that he himself 
was the manifestation of that life, so that 
it was not in any figure of speech that he 
said: " Before Abraham was, I am." He 
uses the strongest phrase possible to express 
his existence, not as our feeble translation 
has it, " If ye believe not that I am he," 
but "If ye believe not that I am." It 
is the same expression that he uses else- 
where when he says : " Before Abraham 
was, I am." It is the consciousness of the 
existence of a oneness of a vital current of 
life circling the universe of human exist- 
ence, and in that consciousness realizing 



248 PERSONALITY. 

that he himself is the highest expression 
of that life, that he himself is the manifes- 
tation of the eternal life of the universe. 

Oh, what an overwhelming power it 
gives to the life to be persuaded, to be 
conscious of the existence of this vitalizing 
current, and to realize that this current 
finds its complete expression in himself ! 
No wonder, then, that he says : " Which 
of you convinceth me of the lack of life? " 
" Which of you convinceth me of the de- 
fect of life ? " " Which of you convinceth 
me of not grasping life firmly ? " " Which 
of you convinceth me of being out of this 
current of life?" " Which of you con- 
vinceth me of failure, of missing the mark 
of life ? " " Which of you convinceth me 
of sin ? ,: No wonder that he speaks of 
the entire freedom that there is within 
himself, and this without the slightest sug- 
gestion, — nay, it seems to jar upon our 
thought to even utter what I am to say, 
— without the slightest suggestion of spir- 
itual pride, — the entire realization that in 
himself there is the fullness of life, where 
there can be no bondage. No man is held 
in bondage when he lives. No man can 
be bound hand and foot in any degree of 



FAITH THE GROUND OF LIFE. 249 

servitude who is welling up with life, life 
that will snap all restraints. Why, the 
tree as it grows will not be restrained by 
any bands or clamps that human ingenuity 
can devise. Life snaps all bondage, and 
the entire freedom of life is in Jesus and 
in his consciousness, in his realization. 
As he sees men despairing, or led in cap- 
tivity by imbruting passions or demor- 
alizing tendencies ; sees them led captive 
by small forces beneath their dignity ; sees 
men creeping as worms, or groping as four- 
footed beasts ; sees men living, not in the 
full dignity of their powers ; sees men be- 
smeared with that which disfigures the 
rare beauty of the countenance illuminated 
by the rays of righteousness and holiness, 
how in great pity he longs to impart to 
them that which he, as the Son of Man, 
as a brother, as a kindred spirit, has in 
common with every human soul, — life, life 
self-centred, life self -poised, self -existent 
life. It is a self - existent life of which we 
take hold — this life of Christ of which 
we may have a part — because it is the life 
of God. He yearns that men shall take 
hold of this life, that they may be free, and 
if the Son make you free, ye shall be free 
indeed. 



250 PERSONALITY. 

It would not be freedom for you if he 
should ask you to escape from pain. Cal- 
vary stares him full in the face. Yet, with 
such a life as his, there cannot be shrink- 
ing from any cross. Therefore he asks 
you to escape from bondage, and so into 
freedom. He says to us and to all man- 
kind, — for he cannot withhold this utter- 
ance from any soul that comes from God, 
— he says : " If ye believe that I am, if ye 
believe in this vitalizing current, namely, 
this eternal life of God, manifested in me, 
ye must live in your holiness, and I, the 
Son of Man, shall make you free." 

There is no suggestion of arbitrariness 
about it. It is not as if Christ were stand- 
ing as an arbitrary king to dole out favors, 
but it is as if he touched a great truth as 
an electric current, and, having touched it, 
this is the necessary outcome of it. And 
in the giving of that life there is escape 
from bondage, from servitude, from sla- 
very ; there is the escape into freedom. The 
only way a man can be saved is by becom- 
ing a son of man, because to become a son 
of man is to link himself indissolubly, — 
say, rather, is to make himself a part of 
this life current, which is the life of God ; 



FAITH THE GROUND OF LIFE. 25 1 

and thus making himself a son of man he 
becomes, in the larger meaning, the child 
of God, and as he becomes a son of man 
and a child of God there is freedom and 
escape, because there is life. So, before 
Abraham was, this Jesus is. What a force 
to manifest itself in human experiences ! 
What a marvel that God should declare 
himself in such a way that men may learn 
the secret of life, that they may live for- 
ever and not die ! 

All religious striving, all pious aspira- 
tion, all thirsting for righteousness, all 
manifestation of the religious consciousness 
which has expressed itself in any era of the 
world's development, all these are not con- 
trary the one to the other, but are as so 
many facets of a precious stone, till men 
are won by the beauty of the perfect 
jewel, Christ, and he thus becomes the 
universal life ; and his religion, nay, not 
religion, but his revelation, being the man- 
ifestation of the divine presence and life, 
must ultimately become universal. Not, 
perchance, as you and I have compre- 
hended Christianity. We have not yet 
stated its full expression. But he who 
stood before the bewildered brethren, de- 



252 PERSOXA LITY. 

claring himself the source of all life, self- 
existent before the days of Abraham, is 
the life of the human race, and in him all 
mankind are to find escape into freedom. 
Escape into freedom ! What a blessed de- 
liverance ! 

What helps me just here is this, that 
there is in Christ, — for he is the ever- 
present, with him there is no past, no fu- 
ture, — there is in Christ a belief in him- 
self. We do not now mistake the nature 
of that belief, but we recognize its exist- 
ence, and I think that one of the first steps 
toward life and freedom is a belief in one's 
self as Christ believed in himself. We see 
intimations of this when we respect the 
righteousness that is within us, the first 
streaks of dawn, so to say, when the sun 
of righteousness rises within our horizon 
and we begin to value righteousness for 
righteousness' sake, virtue for virtue's sake, 
right for right's sake. We see intimations 
of this belief in ourselves in this first re- 
specting the righteousness within us, and 
I think it is the first step we must take in 
the way of escape and life and freedom, 
namely, belief in ourselves. 

For, oh, who are we ? Not that life 



FAITH THE GROUND OF LIFE. 253 

that links itself with the violet or the rose ; 
not that life that is kin to the brute, how- 
soever beautiful may be the manifestation 
of that animal life. We are children of 
the one Father, brothers of the one Christ, 
made in his image, sharers with him, par- 
takers of the divine nature. Fancy the 
tremendous grasp it would have upon a 
man's soul if he could come to believe thus 
in himself: that he himself has a soul that 
is a sharer in the life of God, that he 
himself is a child of God, that he himself 
is a brother of Christ, that within him are 
the divine possibilities, that within him 
there is a possible escape into the full 
freedom of the sons of God. What a 
sweep there would be over the heart-strings 
which, now unstrung, discordant, out of 
tune, give such pathetic wails of discour- 
agement, despair, sorrow, defeat. What a 
sweep there would be over the soul of man, 
producing a divine harmony and the sweet 
music of a free soul, could man but come 
to believe in himself. 

I feel that we cannot believe in God 
until we believe in ourselves, for what is 
said generally is, I think, to be said specif- 
ically. " If a man love not his brother, 



254 PERSONALITY. 

whom he hath seen, how can he love God, 
whom he hath not seen ? " If a man be- 
lieve not in his brother whom he hath 
seen, how can he believe in the great elder 
brother, or in God, whom he hath not 
seen ? So, specifically, if a man believe 
not in this personal life of which he is 
conscious, how can he believe in the life 
of the world — Jesus ? How can he believe 
in God, whom he hath not seen ? I know 
it is hard for you to believe in yourselves. 
I know how disfigured the possible beauty 
of your souls may have become, how you 
shrink from even the introspection that 
shall declare to you the true nature of your 
spiritual life. But beneath it all, removing 
all the debris of past failure, calamity, ca- 
tastrophe, there is the divineness of the 
Father's life. God has given you of him- 
self, you are his child, you are his off- 
spring. 

Oh, a man cannot contentedly stay in sin 
when thus he comes to believe in himself. 
If I could persuade a youthful spirit in 
whom I discerned the genius of an artist 
that these powers, though latent, were 
within him, he could no longer contentedly 
violate the laws of color and proportion, 



FAITH THE GROUND OF LIFE. 255 

strive after the merely clever, but, believing 
in himself, he must strive to the utmost to 
give expression to the life that is within 
him. And Christ, believing in himself, 
soars, so it seems to our limited vision, our 
restricted and withheld sight, — soars into 
the eternities, but on wings only belonging 
to his nature, because he has not only 
fellowship and companionship with God, 
but he has life with God ; and as he lives, 
so are we also to live ; and his flights into 
the eternities are into the mansions pre- 
pared by him for us. 

The other thought that encourages us, 
supports and sustains us, is that our escape 
from bondage, our liberty, our life, our sal- 
vation, comes not only by taking this initial 
step of believing in ourselves, and the sec- 
ondary step of believing in other human 
souls, thus deepening our charity, widening 
our sympathies, intensifying our interest in 
others ; but there is life for us only in be- 
lieving also in Jesus, the Son of Man, the 
Son of God, the light and the life of the 
world. " If ye believe not that I am, ye 
must perish, ye must die in your sins/' 
I cannot find life elsewhere. It is the uni- 
versal life. It is the great life of God, 



256 PERSONALITY, 

which so ramifies human life that there is 
not a soul that is not touched by this vi- 
talizing electric current of life. In him we 
live and cannot die. 

It is a personal matter, so personal that 
first we come to believe in ourselves, in 
that glorious faith that enables us to see 
what we are, — God's dear children. It is 
that faith that makes it possible for us to 
believe in and realize the value of other 
souls, and it is supremely that personal 
love and faith in Jesus our Saviour, who 
thus becomes in very truth our God. For 
thee, whom we have seen, O Jesus, we love 
and believe in, and in loving and believing 
in thee we are loving and believing in God 
whom we have not seen. 

God speed the day, then, when we may 
believe Christ is, and because we believe 
he is we shall live in the righteousness 
that thus becomes ours, because it flows 
through him from the throne of God. 



XVI. 
RICHES OF GOD. 

Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, . . . the things which 

God hath prepared for them that love him. — 

i Cor. ii. 9. 

18 October, i8gi. 



XVI. 

RICHES OF GOD. 

What a prophetic eye St. Paul had ! 
How he discerned the things of the Spirit ! 
Your eye and mine have not seen, into 
your heart and mine have not entered, the 
things which God hath prepared for them 
that love him ; but into St. Paul's heart 
these things had entered ; God has revealed 
them to him by his Spirit. And what God 
has done for St. Paul, God is now doing 
for any and every human soul who will but 
roll back the gates of his being and let the 
tide of spiritual life flow in. 

In other words, there is a revelation of 
God to every individual, which shall become 
a personal possession, a personal revela- 
tion, the acquired property of every human 
soul. And so we wait, you and I and all 
of us, God's will ; you and I wait the pro- 
cess of his unfolding of himself ; you and 
I stand here waiting till God fills up our 



26o PERSONALITY. 

souls with himself. The things that per^ 
tain to God, these are the things for which 
we wait, which he has prepared for them 
that love him ; these pertain to the spir- 
itual life, to the possession of God ; they 
are the things that God hath revealed to 
us by his Spirit. 

This is the spiritual process through 
which the soul is being led step by step. 
Every event that has come to you in your 
life has been the necessary preparatory 
event before the next unfolding of the life 
of God can be received by you. Little by 
little the curtain, so to say, is pushed back, 
just as fast as your vision is able to appre- 
hend that which is being declared and re- 
vealed ; just as fast as you are able to have 
the curtain unrolled, so God is declaring 
himself, revealing himself, unfolding him- 
self to you. Sometimes these events in 
your life have seemed to be cruel, unneces- 
sary, almost the subverting of all spiritual 
attainment and growth, as if they were the 
pushing back of your onward movement ; to 
be like chains about your feet preventing 
the onward step, the cruel iron biting your 
tender flesh or staying your hands as they 
strive to take hold of life, yet only thus in 



RICHES OF GOD. 26 1 

the seeming. Each event that has come 
to you, however seemingly painful, cruel, 
or unnecessary, — each event has been a 
necessary preparatory step that your soul 
might be in a condition to learn more and 
more of God. 

Human souls are made as they are made, 
not as we, perchance, fancy they should be 
made. It is not within the limits of the 
possible that the human soul shall take in 
with one great apprehension all the things 
which God hath revealed, hath prepared, 
for them that love him. Man's capacity 
must be gradually acquired. He does not 
spring into the full attainment of his 
growth and acquisition. His capacity is 
not fully developed at the beginning. The 
little child must first creep and crawl be- 
fore it can walk, lisp and babble before it 
can speak ; he comes first to see, then to 
apprehend, then to become with prophetic 
eye the possessor of a fuller, a larger vi- 
sion of truth. It is so everywhere. Man 
does not spring into immediate possession 
of his powers and capacities in business, 
nor in literature, nor in the sciences, nor 
in any of the possible acquisitions before 
him. It is first the little taking hold, then 



262 PERSONALITY. 

the larger grasp, till finally the full powers 
of the man are expanded to express the 
capacities of his soul for the reception of 
the fuller truth. 

So God stands eager and ready to pour 
out himself, so man waits patiently the 
will of God and the extension of his own 
capacities, and sees in this waiting the ne- 
cessary growth and development of the 
powers of his soul. So he receives every 
event that has come to him as a necessary 
step to the event that is to take place, and 
as he looks over his past life studded with 
blunders, mistakes, yes, sins and crimes, 
marked here and there by the pitfalls into 
which he has fallen, sees in all these events 
which seemed at the time so unnecessary, 
experiences through which his soul must 
pass for the reception of the larger, fuller, 
completer life which his God is waiting to 
pour into his soul. 

Look back, yourself, over the events of 
your past life and ask, Has there been a 
moment in my past history when I have 
been in a position to receive such a mea- 
sure of the power and glory of God as at 
present ? You have lived up to this day 
by passing through certain cruel, painful 



RICHES OF GOD. 263 

experiences. You have had sorrow, fail- 
ure ; you have had yourself thrown back, 
as it were, upon yourself, and thus have 
found yourself thrown back upon the 
power and life of God. It is, of course, 
plainly true that the revelation of God has 
been made already to the very full. The 
sun shining in his heavens stands there 
ever shining, but the infant eye cannot 
apprehend the glory of the sun at once ; 
there are certain painful processes through 
which the eye must first pass. Christ has 
been revealed ; God has declared himself 
in many and multiform ways, but the soul 
cannot apprehend the fullness of the power 
and glory of God, save by its passing 
through certain preparatory processes. So, 
you are glad to welcome these processes 
as they come, because now you see their 
meaning. You are now standing upon the 
vantage ground which you have won, inch 
by inch, and, standing there, you are able 
to realize now somewhat of the power, the 
life, the love, the richness, of those things 
which God has revealed to you of himself 
by his Spirit. 

"Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, " but 
eye shall see and ear shall hear, and it 



264 PERSONALITY. 

shall enter into the heart of man, this life 
of God, just so fast as eye is adjusted to 
the vision, ear quickened to the sound, and 
heart prepared for the revelation of the 
life, the unfolding of the power, the mani- 
festation of the majesty of Almighty God. 
When that comes, — as come it shall, 
sooner or later, in the experience of every 
man's life ; not, perhaps, to-day, nor to- 
morrow, nor ten, nor a hundred, nor a 
thousand years hence, but come it must, — 
but when that hour comes, behold, " all 
old things are passed away, and all things 
are become new." 

All old things pass away. Why, the 
very God you had in your childhood is 
now lost to you in the larger, richer, fuller 
possession of him whom you now call 
" My God." You seem to stand now in a 
new heaven and on a new earth. You 
seem now to have a God of your own. He 
has become such that you now say, " Thou 
art my God and I will praise thee ; thou 
art my God and I will exalt thee." If he 
is become to you a personal possession, a 
new God has come into your heart, a per- 
sonal appropriation, a personal apprehen- 
sion, a personal, actual property of your 



RICHES OF GOD. 265 

own, as it were. You and God, God and 
you, the one with the other, the other with 
the one, standing alone in the world as if 
he were God only to you, and as if you 
were his only child. There comes such a 
nearness of the relation that your heart is 
filled with the richness and the riches of 
this outpoured life of himself. 

As these new things come to you, so a 
new estimate of everything with which you 
come in contact is made also. The men 
now about you are new souls ; there are 
new meanings of events, new understand- 
ings of the processes through which the 
soul passes. The soul has a new value to 
you, because you see in it the unfolding 
of the manifestation of the life of God. 
So wherever you see a human soul you 
look with eager searching eyes to read the 
revelation, the story, the manifestation, 
the unfolding of this infinite eternal living 
God of yours. No child that babbles, no 
youth that strives, no man who exerts the 
power of his manhood, no human soul ex- 
pressing itself, comes before your life with- 
out a message of God to you. So that 
every man, every soul, every child, every 
human life, is now to you a word of God, 



266 PERSONALITY, 

a ray of truth. Nay, every event in life, 
howsoever befogging it may seem, is an 
unfolding of the life of God, is the pour- 
ing into the human soul of the message 
of God. See how a new estimate is put 
upon the value of every human soul, how 
it quickens our interest in all human en- 
deavors, our pity for every human trans- 
gression, increases our charity for every 
human soul as it struggles toward the light 
and toward larger life, and pants and 
thirsts and yearns for escape and freedom ; 
how it makes a new world of that in which 
you live. 

Why is all this ? Because this manifes- 
tation of God is none other than the reve- 
lation of life ; in other words, none other 
than the manifestation of perfect manness, 
manhood. So where we take hold of an 
attribute of a man, of life, there we are 
taking hold of perfect manhood, taking 
hold of God ; and as, step by step, we pass 
through these painful processes and are 
able to take hold of anything that is good 
and true, wheresoever we are able to take 
hold of anything that is positive, there we 
are taking into our souls a fraction, so to 
say, of these infinite riches, of the perfect 
manhood, of the unfolding life of God. 



RICHES OF GOD. 267 

It needs illustration. I need to tell you 
that when perhaps last week a great cloud 
of thick blackness shut down over your 
life, and despair was the only wail the soul 
was capable of uttering, because of failure, 
of transgression, of great affliction, of sor- 
row, of the evil that seemed to demand a 
supremacy in your nature, that was the 
moment when you were nearer to God, 
perhaps, than ever before ; and if in that 
moment of despair and weakness you were 
able to take hold of but the hem of the 
garment of perfect manhood, from the 
touch there came virtue, power, strength, 
— you were taking hold of God. So mar- 
velous is this real and vital presence of 
Christ ! 

Oh, the richness of such a life, even in 
its apparent poverty ! How near to great 
riches is the soul when it is beggared of 
its own possessions, when all its estimates 
of value have been reversed, turned upside 
down, till now that which it once consid- 
ered of the greatest value and to be striven 
after is held to be altogether worthless, 
and that which had been lost sight of now 
becomes the first thing to be desired ! 

It is the history of the human race con- 



268 PERSONALITY. 

stantly, as it is the history of the individual 
soul, this taking of the physical as of the 
first importance ; then later the outpouring 
of the life of God becomes the triumph 
in the ethical struggle of the spiritual over 
the physical. There comes a moment in a 
man's life when he ceases to regard the 
physical as of worth, and it is then that 
there is a triumph of the spiritual over the 
physical. It is the life of the spirit. It is 
the outcome of the ethical struggle, of the 
struggle for life, for mastery, for escape, 
for freedom, and when this life of God be- 
comes the possession of man, when man, 
little by little, takes hold of these attri- 
butes of manness, of manhood, then he 
finds himself brought really and vitally 
into the presence of the one life who man- 
ifests, completely and entirely, the eternal 
life of God, and fills up to the very full 
man's soul with perfection, that is, with the 
life of the eternal righteousness. 

Thus are we brought into the realm of 
the operation of the Spirit. "God hath 
revealed himself unto us by his Spirit. ,, 
The child learns the alphabet, but it is not 
till the full processes of life have been 
gone through that, in his mature years, he 



RICHES OF GOD. 269 

is able to apprehend the real meaning of 
the rich treasures of poetry. So we, in the 
infancy of our spiritual growth and devel- 
opment, learn the alphabet of the begin- 
ning of life, and are made acquainted with 
the historic Christ, know him in a measure ; 
but it is not till the great soul-processes 
have been gone through that the soul 
comes to learn the deep things of God, 
to know Jesus truly and vitally, comes into 
the possession of the life of that perfect 
manhood, into the acquisition of that man- 
hood as applied to human life, into the 
knowledge of the things God has prepared 
for them that love him, and which are 
made known to him only by the Spirit and 
through the processes of the Spirit alone, 
which are the way of the development of 
the soul as it is brought into communion, 
and into clear vision, with God and of 
God. 

So we wait for God's will, you and I, — 
not with painful patience, but with patient 
joy, knowing that all things work together 
for good to them that love him. There 
can be but one outcome of love. There 
can be but one result to the soul that loves 
righteousness, takes hold of truth. 



270 PERSONALITY. 

"If I stoop 
Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, 
It is but for a time ; I press God's lamp 
Close to my breast ; its splendour, soon or late, 
Will pierce the gloom : I shall emerge one day." 

There can be but one outcome in the great 
struggle for life, — the outcome of escape 
from bondage, the freedom of the soul as 
it wings its flight into the very presence 
of the effulgence of the great glory of the 
eternal righteousness of God, and is now 
able to see him face to face, — him who 
before was beheld darkly because of the 
mists, whether of transgression or doubt, 
or of uncertainty, or of indifference, darkly 
because of the clouds that arose between 
the soul and the face of the always loving 
Father. " Eye hath not seen nor ear 
heard the things which God hath prepared 
for them that love him, but God hath re- 
vealed them unto us by his Spirit." 

This revelation is going on all the time. 
It is the blessed gospel of good tidings 
which Christ brings to you. He stands 
before you in the infancy of your spiritual 
life, and you behold somewhat of his beauty, 
— the beauty of his character, the great 
richness of his holiness ; but, more and 



RICHES OF GOD. 2*]\ 

more as he stands before you, as in the 
great struggles of your life you pass on 
with ever-increasing capacity for truth and 
life, he pours into you more and more of 
himself, till there come moments when the 
Christ-life is filling you up to the full. The 
life of love, of gentleness, of uprightness, 
of integrity, so fills you that your life is hid 
with Christ in God, and Christ in you be- 
comes the ground, as well as the hope, of 
your ultimate glory. Glory as it seems to 
me is none other than this, the irradiation 
of the soul in the high noon blaze of its 
spiritual power and activity. Therefore in 
this gradual acquisition of the Christ-life 
in you there is the ground, the hope, of 
your ultimate manifestation, the ground of 
your ultimate shining forth in the fullness 
of your spiritual powers, in the complete 
glory of a son of God. 

How rich, oh, how unspeakably rich, 
must such souls be ; for so filled with Christ 
they are giving, though unconsciously, 
Christ to others. 

Is there not a new God for you to-day ? 
Is he not the one to whom your soul cries 
out, " My God ; " and does not your soul say 
to him, " My God, I wait, and through all 



272 PERSONALITY, 

these painful events of life I still wait, in 
the full assurance, nay, in the sure know- 
ledge, that thou art opening wide the win- 
dows of my soul that thou mayest ^hine 
into its very deepest recesses with the full- 
ness of thy life " ? 

Do you not say, " Now, O my soul, 
wait thou for Christ to come, more and 
more," till he take complete possession as 
the fullness of the Godhead bodily, filling 
up every recess, every possible part of 
your soul, so filling it that your will and 
heart and love and mind and thought are 
at one with him ? Thus becoming through 
Christ one with God, you find your free- 
dom, your escape, your final salvation. 



XVII. 
ENTERING BY FAITH. 

Strive to enter in at the strait gate. — St. Luke xiii. 24. 
16 November, i8gi. 



XVII. 

ENTERING BY FAITH. 

This spiritual energy that manifests it- 
self in striving is the first element of free- 
dom. We were born for freedom ; we came 
into the world to become, in all the large- 
ness and fullness of the meaning of the 
term, sons of God. Nothing short of the 
realization of this boundless, limitless, spir- 
itual life can ever satisfy the demands of 
the being of the human soul ; and man 
must say : " For this purpose came I into 
the world, that I might be free." Whatso- 
ever, therefore, is holding man in captivity 
is alien to his nature, and needs one day 
or other to be stripped off. It is a chain, a 
shackle, a sign of bondage. This spiritual 
force, this energy which strives, which 
agonizes (for this is what it means), for 
life, as a competitor in a race strives, ago- 
nizes to reach what he feels to be the pos- 
sible goal, is the ground of liberty. 



276 PERSONALITY. 

No man throws himself into a race with- 
out the thought that the goal is possible 
to be reached, and the very striving that he 
makes, the very beginning of this striving, 
the very energy that thus wells up within 
him, that makes the striving possible, is, as 
it were, the first step in the race, — better 
than that, the first element within him of 
his freedom. 

When there is a loss or an absence of 
this striving, when there is such a decay 
of this spiritual force and energy that there 
is no effort, no conscious uplifting of life, 
nay, worse than that, not even the desire 
of effort and of striving, then the plummet 
has been dropped to the very lowest depth 
which the human soul is capable of ex- 
periencing, desire sunk, buried, lost, no up- 
lifting of spiritual force sufficient to stir the 
calm, placid surface of indifferent apathy, 
the stillness, as it were, of death. Pity the 
soul when he reaches that deep where there 
is only apathy, where no desire can cause 
even a bubble of energy, of effort, of striv- 
ing to reach the glassy surface of a life 
lost in despair. So that the very first 
striving, the very first realization, as it were, 
of a new life, the very beginning of the 



ENTERING BY FAITH. 2J J 

expression of this spiritual energy, is the 
first element of a man's freedom. 

How that striving is to be kindled ; how 
that desire is to be again set aglow ; how 
that energy is to be called forth into mani- 
festation and expression, must be deter- 
mined by the characteristics peculiar to 
the individual. In one man, perchance, 
who long since has strayed from his fa- 
ther's home, the thought that a mother 
still prays, a mother's love still remembers, 
that a mother's heart still agonizes for the 
welfare of the child who once was folded 
to her bosom, — such a recollection, such 
a calling back of old-time memories, may 
be the incentive of desire, the inception of 
energy, the quickening of a life that shall 
manifest itself in striving. But, howsoever 
this awakening shall be called forth, when- 
ever it comes, whenever there is the first 
quickening expression of this new life, the 
first coming to the birth of an energy striv- 
ing for expression, there, at that instant, 
the first element of freedom has been ac- 
quired. 

We may turn this about and say that 
until there is a striving, man is still in his 
bondage. Until life begins to pulsate, to 



278 PERSONALITY. 

throb, to express, to manifest itself ; until 
there be an inspiration that shall breathe 
upon the dying embers of desire, fanning 
them into a quickening flame ; until a man 
desire escape, desire freedom and strive 
after it, he is still in bondage. He is, as 
it were, a great giant, prostrate, bound 
hand and foot, mouth stopped, breath gone, 
silent in the dust. Galvanized life may be 
forced into him, and he may arise and 
walk the streets and pursue his various 
avocations, but the life which is properly 
his, which is peculiarly his, which is his 
by birth, which he should vindicate by ex- 
pressing to the full, is dead, because the 
desire, the striving, the expressing of the 
energy within him, has not as yet taken 
place. 

Alas, how many of us are thus spiritually 
dead ! How many of us are living but an 
artificial life ! How many of us are thus 
non-vital in our goings in and comings out, 
are thus living merely the semblance of a 
life, God only, in his loving wisdom, knows, 
and in that same loving, pitying wisdom 
cares, and will not suffer us to long continue 
so. It may be that that darkest moment 
when desire, even as a faint spark, has be- 



ENTERING BY EAITH. 279 

come extinguished, and a thick black dark- 
ness, in the absence of this faint glimmer 
of desire, has taken possession of the soul, 
— it may be that that instant was God's 
opportunity, that then there was the be- 
ginning of a new life ; desire again began 
to appear and energy began to stir within 
the prostrate form, till the man, first creep- 
ing, then raising himself to his feet, strove 
with a mighty, agonizing striving to enter 
into the strait gate. It is encouraging to 
think that when a man has touched the 
very bottom of this awful deep of spiritual 
apathy, it may be a rich moment, paradoxi- 
cal as it may sound, in his spiritual expe- 
rience, in the process of the development 
of his soul ; mighty contrasts of values may 
appear and desire be awakened. Howso- 
ever a man may be living, he is not living 
truly and vitally until the energy of his 
spiritual life manifests itself in some desire 
and striving for the possible attainment of 
his being. 

This exhortation to striving, this call 
that comes from the Saviour's lips, is not 
an appeal to apathy, to vacancy of will, to 
an enervation caused by spiritual transgres- 
sion. Have I not said enough to make 



28o PERSONALITY. 

it quite apparent without further elabora- 
tion that while this apathy lasts a man is 
not living ; that while there is a vacancy 
of will, the human soul, as such, is not 
being true to its possibilities ; that while 
a man is spiritually debilitated and ener- 
vated by clinging to his transgressions he 
is in the very bondage of helplessness ? 
So that this appeal is not to man's apathy, 
not to that spiritual enervation, which is 
caused by, and continues because of, a life 
of spiritual transgression, which we call 
sin, but it is a deeper call ; it is an appeal 
to desire, which is the starting-point of the 
highest, noblest, and best that there is 
within us. It is the call of the Son of God 
to a son of God. It is " Child of God, 
son of man, brother of Christ, ,, — it is the 
call to the human soul as such, as a par- 
taker of the divine life, — " Son of man, 
arise, stand on thy feet." So that this 
striving — oh, how discouraging at times 
it has been to you ! — yet this striving, be 
well assured of this, is the first element of 
your freedom. Thank God for it. Praise 
him that it has expressed itself within you. 
Blessed be his name that there is within 
you the striving at this moment for large- 
ness and fullness of life. 



ENTERING BY FAITH. 28 1 

Sometimes, however, this striving is mis- 
directed, looks in wrong directions for its 
proper manifestation, is led astray by false 
notions as to how the striving may accom- 
plish its best results. Sometimes, as in 
the case of the drunkard, the dipsomaniac, 
the gambler, — the man who is led in cap- 
tivity by these and other lusts of the flesh, 
— sometimes this striving for freedom and 
escape is asked to secure its freedom by 
artificial methods, extraneous appliances, 
as if we were to shut out of mind the 
teaching of the analogue of nature, whereby 
we perceive that nothing of life comes from 
without. 

The tree buttressed by extraneous sup- 
ports is not thereby vitally increased in its 
strength. We may prop up a building, be- 
cause it is not vital ; but the tree, to grow 
strong, must have strength at its roots, its 
vitality must well up from within, as the 
vital sap rushes through trunk and limb to 
twig and leaf, and in that strength which 
comes from within the tree its entire free- 
dom is made possible and realized. This 
everlasting analogue must be kept in mind 
whenever the thought of man is in danger 
of being deluded by false possibilities that 



282 PERSONALITY. 

help, strength, support can come from with- 
out. Environment may sometimes aid, but 
may never give life. I may build round 
the young sapling a wall to protect its in- 
fant life, but that does not give life to the 
tree. I may cover with glass the tender 
shoot, and that may protect it from pelting 
storm, driving rain, biting, cutting sleet ; 
but that does not give life to the growth 
which I am caring for. So there may be 
many things to which we may give the name 
environment, which may help and minister 
to certain possibilities of realization, yet 
the growth and strength must always come 
from within. The appeal must ever be 
made to the spiritual depths of the soul. 
Let us do what we can in the way of re- 
moving needless temptation ; but, in the 
removing of temptation, let us always un- 
derstand that this is not the coming of 
life, — it is merely building a fence or wall 
about the life, which may serve a protective 
purpose, but no other. 

Entering into the strait gate is through 
the righteousness of a person. I have had 
much to say — and I hope I may have 
strength to say it again and again, often and 
often, to the very end — of the personal 



ENTERING BY FAITH. 28$ 

element as it has to do with our spiritual 
life. I have called your thought to the 
person of Christ, and this because the very- 
nature of the striving is the realization of 
the righteousness of God. I am conscious 
that this is strong language. I understand 
what it implies, — that we are sons of God, 
parts of God. Will you misunderstand me 
if I say that we are gods ? Christ said it. 
And it seems to me indubitably, everlast- 
ingly true that the end of this striving, the 
destiny of it, the goal of it, is the realization 
of the righteousness of God, that we are 
made for this righteousness, that this right- 
eousness is possible one day or other, some 
time or other, somehow or other. Salva- 
tion cannot be confined to a smaller signifi- 
cance than this, — the entire escape and 
freedom into the absolute realization of the 
righteousness of God. Therefore, this en- 
tering into the strait gate of righteousness, 
of life (that is the apparent meaning ; it 
needs no analysis, or exegesis, or elabora- 
tion), must be through a person, through 
the righteousness of a person. 

It must be a living, vitalizing, and vital 
faith, belief, trust in the righteous one, 
Christ. So that justification by faith is 



284 PERSONALITY, 

the entering into the being of Christ. It 
is the striving and the entering. It is the 
losing of the life in the life of another. It 
is going into the being of another. It is 
abiding in the being of another. It is be- 
ing clothed by the life of another, and so 
the righteousness of another. So that be- 
ing justified by faith is not a judicial, fo- 
rensic justification ; it is not a substituted 
justification. That is impossible, unvital, 
negative. But it is the actual being in 
Christ. 

Note how self, dwelling alone with itself, 
is poverty. Note how sin is a violating of 
soul-laws, — and soul-laws is only our way 
of saying soul-manifestation ; strictly speak- 
ing, there is no such thing as law, for law 
is only the jotting down, the record, the 
report of our observation of the processes 
of nature, whether spiritual or physical, so 
that the term law is at the best a term of 
accommodation, — note how the violation 
of soul-laws has always a cutting-off nature, 
a separating, isolating nature, leaving the 
soul standing alone in its beggarliness, its 
poverty, its guilt, its shame. Then note 
that a justification by faith, an entering 
into righteousness, is by the self being lost 



ENTERING BY FAITH. 285 

in the self of another who is worthy of it. 
So that our life is hid with Christ in God ; 
that is to say, he, being worthy of receiv- 
ing us, his righteousness being whole right- 
eousness as ours is fragmentary, — he, the 
righteous one, being capable of receiving 
us, worthy of our dwelling in him, is the 
one in whom we live ; and being in Christ 
is possessing riches. Oh, the unspeakable 
riches of Christ ! 

This faith, then, is the very enthronement 
of life. It cannot be an arbitrary matter, as 
he who should say, " It is an intellectual 
process by which we assent to certain state- 
ments, creeds, or dogmas." That is artifi- 
cial, as if the sapling were to say to the tree, 
" This is a tree. This tree grows, buds, 
blossoms, bears fruit, refreshes the w T eary 
and the hungry by its fruitage." That is 
but assenting to certain truths which are 
truisms. It intellectually apprehends this 
unquestionable truth as to the tree. But 
the sapling, to live, must live as the tree 
lives. It must lose its life in the same 
life-current that wells up within the trunk 
and limbs, the vitalizing forces of the tree. 

So that the faith which is accomplishing 
righteousness in us is a faith that is not 



286 PERSONALITY. 

conscious of its being faith at all. When 
we are to walk in newness of life we are 
to forget our own lives, forget even our 
faith, and have our thoughts centred on 
the life worthy of us. Nor must we look 
down at the abyss over which our cautious 
steps are bearing us, lest thus looking'. we 
become conscious of ourselves, and slip- 
ping pitch headlong, by reason of our real- 
ization of our own self-consciousness. He 
who thus values faith as faith has not 
faith, because he has turned from Christ 
to himself, from Christ to his own being, 
his own nature. It is selfness asserting 
itself, and thus driving out the possibility 
of selflessness, for selfness is self-realiza- 
tion in its unreal sense. Therefore, he 
who is thinking most of his faith, either as 
to its nicety of expression or as to the ex- 
actitude of its utterance, or as to its power 
by which it may accomplish certain results, 
■ — in whatsoever form this self-compla- 
cency of a perfect faith presents itself as 
being entitled to admiration and respect, 
that very moment it ceases to be faith, 
and becomes artificial, unreal, unvital, and 
cannot speed the soul on toward the reali- 
zation of its possibilities, toward the fulfill- 
ment of the righteousness of God. 



ENTERING BY FAITH. 287 

But when the soul is lost in Christ, lost 
in an absolute thinking of Christ and a for- 
getting of self, an absolute trust and faith 
in the righteousness of God, then, plunged 
beneath that flood of the blood of Christ, 
— that is, the life, the vitalizing, energizing 
force and power of the righteousness of 
God as it comes to us in Christ, — it is 
washed of its guilt, as the tree is washed 
of its guilt when its enswathement is 
stripped off and the new bark takes its 
place. So we, disrobed of our sin and 
transgression, are clothed upon by the 
righteousness of God. 

In the soul's onward movement toward 
the goal not the universe can stay it, not 
the power of man or angel can hinder or 
let it, because now its life is lost in the 
fullness of a life which is at one with God's ; 
and the universe and all its powers, not 
only not staying, not hindering it, but bid- 
ding it " Godspeed," are ministering to 
its progress and advancement. For it is 
going the way of the universe. It is going 
the way of righteousness, and in that going 
it finds it is at one with him whose striv- 
ing found realization and fulfillment when 
in Gethsemane he strove, agonized, till he 



288 PERSONALITY. 

could bring his will into absolute oneness 
with the will of God and say, " Neverthe- 
less not my will, but thine, be done." 

For this you are born, to be free in the 
freedom of the realization of the life of 
Christ. This oneness with Christ as he 
is one with God is your life. His life-blood 
is the blood that pardons guilt, that clothes 
the nakedness of shame. It is this faith 
in him that washes the soul white and 
clean, that brings new life into the para- 
lyzed limbs, new flesh upon the leprous 
frame, new power into the enervated, pros- 
trated spiritual form. This crying out to 
us to strive to enter the strait gate is the 
calling to the great giant whom -God has 
made for great things, and is the bidding 
him, — " Son of man, arise, stand on thy 
feet." 

Oh, then, may we not strive, strive with 
a great agonizing force and power, to enter 
into the righteousness, into the life and 
power of God, through Jesus Christ our 
Lord! 



XVIII. 

NO SEPARATION FROM THE LOVE 
OF GOD. 

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life . . . shall 

be able to separate us from the love of God. — 

Rom. viii. 38, 39. 

8 November ; i8gi. 



XVIIL 

NO SEPARATION FROM THE LOVE OF 
GOD. 

Who shall separate us from the love of 
Christ ? Shall tribulation, distress, trans- 
gression, famine, nakedness, the sword ? 
For we are more than conquerors in all 
these things through him that loved us, 
because love is the greatest gift of God to 
man. The capacity for receiving love, the 
ability to express it, makes of man a crea- 
tor; it brings him into oneness with the 
creative forces of God, and he himself be- 
comes filled with the creative power. 

As heat is the sun in operation, so is 
love God in manifestation ; and as nothing 
in heaven or earth may shut out heat in 
its operation, and so cut off the efficacy of 
the sun, so here we have an analogue of 
God in operation through love, for love is 
not only " the sunlight of peace," it is the 
very power of the sun, the very force of 
God, ramifying in every direction all the 



292 PERSONALITY. 

forms of life, and producing in creative 
power oneness with God himself. 

Am I not right, then, in being persuaded 
that love is the greatest gift of God to 
man, both in capacity and in expression, 
the ability to receive, and the ability to 
make manifest, the ability to throw wide 
the portals of the heart and let in the 
streams of God's eternal sunshine, his con- 
tinued light of mercy and peace, — and 
the ability to manifest from the impelling 
power of the heart this same divine oper- 
ation of love ? It is man's highest achieve- 
ment, as it is the indication of his highest 
glory, this reception of love, and this abil- 
ity to express it. 

When man has so succeeded in laying 
bare the deepest recesses of his soul that 
he may take in, in all its fullness, the vital 
power of the love of God, and in something 
like a similar fullness give expression to 
it, then he has reached the sublimest 
height of which he is capable ; then he 
has justified his existence. For the first 
moment in his life he has arisen to his feet 
and stood there in all the dignity, majesty, 
and sublimity of a son of man ; he stands 
for the first time in his life a redeemed, 



NO SEPARATION, 293 

liberated, free being; he has become one 
with him who says : " I and the Father 
are one." 

What sublime sunlit heights are these 
to which man may fly as a bird escaped 
from the fowler ? What achievements are 
these which shall bring man into creative 
oneness with the Almighty Sun of right- 
eousness, who manifests himself in life- 
giving power, encircling the globe with his 
creative force ? 

Hence St. Paul says : " I am persuaded 
of this love of God ; I am persuaded that 
neither death, nor life, nor things present, 
nor things to come, can separate me and 
us, and all mankind, from the love of God 
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 

Why, if a man were to have held before 
him to-day, as in a silver cup, lined with 
gold, all the rare precious gems the world 
has so known as to give them names be- 
cause of their great preciousness and value, 
— if these were held out to him, the tangi- 
ble riches of the world, they would be as 
nothing in comparison with this creative 
power of love that is held before him as 
the possibility which shall make him at one 
with God. 



294 PERSONALITY. 

I magnify the power of love, because I 
see it is the highest name we may give to 
God ; because I see that one who is the 
Son of Man, the elder brother of us all, 
has exemplified that power, manifested 
that power, is the embodiment of that 
power, and is, in very truth, one with him, 
the Father of all love. I magnify this 
force, this potency, this creative energy 
of love, to the utmost, because I see in it 
the only way of man's justification, the 
only way of man's expression of his entire 
being ; because I see in it the only way of 
escape from man's prison-house, the only 
way of his entering into that large liberty 
of the sons of God. I see in this energiz- 
ing force, vitalizing power, man's highest 
achievement, that which brings him into 
oneness with Christ and with God. I 
magnify this force because of the necessity 
that lies upon every human soul to strive 
after its reception, to strive endlessly after 
its expression, to yearn with a great desire, 
to be thus one with God. Neither death 
nor life shall separate us from this love of 
God, because it has a double manifesta- 
tion. It is the capacity for loving on our 
side, and it is the capacity for loving on 



NO SEPARATION . 295 

God's side. Man has within him this 
ability to love, to express his love, and 
until he has acquired the power of mani- 
festing that love, he is paralyzed in certain 
functions of his soul, a great leprosy is 
seizing the very life of his spiritual nature, 
making useless their forces. There is, then, 
the necessity on man's part of love, and 
not death itself shall separate him from 
this power of expressing love. There are 
things that creep upon him, which are of 
the nature of spiritual death, — malice, ma- 
lignity, transgression, the desire of pulling 
down the one who stands in his path, 
hindering his progress and achievement, 
the bitterness of discord, the fierceness of 
cruelty unbridled and unchecked, the un- 
forgiving, relentless spirit ; but even all 
these shall not separate man from God's 
love. They are shutting God out of man's 
life, for while man is in this state of dis- 
cord, in this state of malice, suffering hatred 
to take possession of his soul, then he is, 
in the very nature of things, shutting out 
the capacity for the large expression of his 
life, because he is shutting out his ability 
to love God. No man can love God whom 
he hath not seen, while hating his brother 



296 PERSONALITY. 

whom he hath seen. No man can fill his 
lungs with poison and pure air at the same 
moment. No man can take hold of hatred, 
unforgiveness, all these evil powers of the 
soul which dwarf and belittle and starve it, 
and at the same moment express in any 
degree the fair possibilities of his spiritual 
nature. For he is binding his spiritual 
nature with the hard cords of malice, bind- 
ing it hand and foot, so that it cannot rise 
into the dignity of manhood — into one- 
ness of sonship with God. He is bound 
by hatred to death ! In a word, I wish I 
could make you see that hatred is damna- 
tion. 

Oh, the necessity of forgiveness, and of 
thus coming into the eternal presence of 
God, where we may rest in abiding peace ! 
But not even this spiritual death of ma- 
lignity, of hatred, of malice, though it shut 
God out of our hearts, can shut us out of 
the infinite, tender, pitying, loving heart 
of God. When you are most demonlike, 
though your sin of hatred be as scarlet, 
God cannot tear you from his heart. There 
are heartstrings of infinite love that en- 
circle you, arms of infinite pity that hold 
you, hateful, sinful, perverted as you are, 



NO SEPARATION. 297 

— arms that hold you in a never-yielding 
grasp. 

Nor yet can the spiritual death of your 
sinful conduct separate you from God's 
love. God loves on, though your own love 
for him is destroyed by your sin. Run 
through the category of past transgression, 
and in every instance you must find that 
sin drives out love. If I steal or bear false 
witness against my neighbor, I am not lov- 
ing, I am not vindicating my title to be a 
son of man. But, though sin tears at the 
soul-bands that bind me to the great heart 
of God, so tears at them that they are, 
seemingly, to snap ; though my actual 
transgression tugs at the very anchor chains 
which bind me to the rock of ages ; though 
I am, as it were, tugged at as the moon 
tugs at the tides, scattered hither and 
thither up and down the " everlasting beach 
of things ; " though thus in my sinning I 
am, as it were, snatching to pull down the 
lights in heaven, the stars of wisdom, and 
bringing into my soul black, thick dark- 
ness, obscuring the light of heaven itself ; 
though thus in my sinning I am undermin- 
ing my own integrity, doing violence to my 
spiritual possibilities, driving out, crowd- 



298 PERSONALITY. 

ing out love for God, yet not even this 
spiritual death of actual transgression can 
separate me from the love of my Father ! 

" God ! Thou art love ! I build my faith on that ! 
Even as I watch beside thy tortured child 
Unconscious whose hot tears fall fast by him, 
So doth thy right hand guide us through the world 
Wherein we stumble." 

If Jesus had never uttered any other 
word than to give us the parable of the 
prodigal son, he would have everlastingly 
compelled our gratitude, to tell us that 
though we are companioning with the 
swine, yet, whensoever that moment of 
self-realization shall come, and we come to 
ourselves and take one step toward his for- 
giving heart, then he will run and throw 
his arms about our necks and enfold us in 
his forgiving, pitying embrace, for nothing 
can separate even a sinful heart and life 
from this love of God. 

Men are taking hold of riches, of power, 
of invention, of attainment, of achieve- 
ment ; we see the progress of the race in 
civilization, of the individual in acquiring 
powers, the multiplicity, the enlargement, 
the widening scope and sphere of man's 
activities ; but all these multiform phases 



NO SEPARATION. 299 

of life often shut out the love of God ; and 
man, in his prosperity, forgets mercy, gen- 
erosity, kindness, pity, tenderness, helpful- 
ness, fellowship, love. 

Yes, the rich can enter the kingdom of 
heaven, though burdened with great packs 
of jewels and bent low with the load of 
great acquisition. It is quite within the 
limits of the possible. Rich men may en- 
ter the kingdom of love and mercy and 
pity and righteousness, the kingdom of 
heaven, even as the overloaded pack mule 
may squeeze through that narrow and la- 
cerating pass of jagged rocks which is 
known, because of its narrowness, as the 
"Needle's Eye." Yet not even the dan- 
ger of riches, the shutting-out power of 
prosperity ; not even the dangers of spirit- 
ual pride, which come by reason of man's 
attainments and acquisitions, — not even 
these soul-destroying forces, which make 
a true spiritual life to seem almost shut 
out of possible grasp, can separate us from 
his love. 

God's pruning hand will never forget in 
love our prosperity. In his great love for 
us he will not forget to cut us back. When 
the proper moment comes, this rich bear- 



300 PERSONALITY. 

ing vine hanging over the walls with great 
purple clusters, this wealth, reputation, or 
success, even these God will cut back, and 
in the winepress we may alone tread out 
the wine of life, till it becomes possible 
for us to take the cup pressed out in grief 
and sorrow and drink it gladly, cheerfully, 
to the last drop, for it is the wine of God's 
love which could not let us live longer with- 
out him. Thus are we forced back upon 
God. 

Therefore was not St. Paul right when 
he was persuaded that nothing could sepa- 
rate us from the love of God which we 
have in Christ Jesus our Lord ? Have we 
not seen how necessary love is to^ save us 
from malignity, from unforgiveness, from 
malice ? How necessary love is to tear 
away the prison bars which hatred has 
made fast to hold in captivity our spiritual 
lives ? Have we not seen the necessity of 
love, the sharp knife of love, to cut the 
withes that are binding the soul so that it 
cannot escape to God ? How necessary 
it is that we should love Christ! 

For who is Christ ? He is the life of God 
made manifest. He it is who has shown us 
what man is, — " man in his birth, God in 



NO SEPARATION. 30I 

his deathlessness ; " man in his weakness, 
God in his capacity for living and loving. 
Do we not owe gratitude to this Christ 
who thus has shown us what man is, and 
not only what man is, but has so exempli- 
fied in himself all the forces of manhood 
that he stands as the Son of Man ? And 
when he stands as the perfect Son of Man, 
the elder brother, he is showing us how 
living on such Apennine heights brings us 
where we may be illuminated and cheered 
by the sun of God's love striking out clear 
and warm from what had seemed to us a 
black cloud of great darkness ; enabling us 
to see that on such a height we are brought 
into vital contact with the love of God, and 
may be one with Christ, as he is one with 
the Father. 

When, therefore, in the oneness of that 
relationship you receive this mighty power 
of love, then in your new, vitalizing, life- 
giving power you bless where before you 
cursed, you exchange for the girdle knife 
the branch of olive, you build up where 
before you tore down, give life where 
once you were sowing the seeds of death, 
restore where once you destroyed. You 
in your new power, like God, are bring- 



302 PERSONALITY. 

ing peace on earth, good will to men. You 
are bringing life in its fullness, — the life 
which has saved you and is now saving your 
brother also. 

" I am persuaded, that neither death nor 
life, angels, principalities, powers, things 
present, things to come, nor any other crea- 
ture shall be able to separate us from the 
love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our 
Lord." 

u I know Thee, who hast kept my path, and made 
Light for me in the darkness, tempering sorrow 
So that it reached me like a solemn joy ; 
It were too strange that I should doubt Thy love." 



THE END, 



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